Dronegaze in the time of entropy...
Established June 2016, Memphis, Tennessee
magpie (zachary) corsa
denny wilkerson corsa
lost trail 2009 - 2016
nonconnah 2016 - forever
significant elements of: drone, shoegaze, ambient, doom,
noise, post-rock, dream-pop, psych, space-rock, glitch, lo-fi
trace elements of: math-rock, indie-rock, idm, free jazz,
classical, musique concrète, folk, old time/mountain music
www.nonconnahdrone.com
www.nonconnahordeath.bandcamp.com
www.instagram.com/nonconnahordeath
ernest jenning record co. contact: info@ernestjenning.com
booking: nonconnahvsdarkness@gmail.com
licensing: john@bankrobbermusic.com, dana.l@artlist.io
publishing: BMI
labels: ernest jenning record co, was ist das?, mutual skies (north america),
cruel nature (uk/europe), east cape calling (oceania)...also: somewherecold,
silber, custom made music
for shirts and such, please consult:
www.nonconnahordeath.bandcamp.com/merch
we also run a small press/handmade record label,
marble faun. links to web presence arriving shortly.
we conduct our mid-fi sonic experiments at our home
laboratory, the truly fascinating world, in the soulsville neighborhood
of memphis, tennessee. for information about our production
and mixing services, please email us or message us on Instagram.
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INTERVIEWS:
https://ihrtn.net/track-by-track-nonconnah-songs-for-and-about-ghosts/
http://www.pedalfuzz.com/interviews/2018/8/9/nonconnah
https://www.attnmagazine.co.uk/features/11516
https://foxydigitalis.zone/2023/08/22/the-lost-trail-leads-to-nonconnah/
https://songsandwich.buzzsprout.com/1896409/9641583-zachary-corsa?fbclid=IwAR1SFd6GJcq23-Gg1odWMApcfco3KXWm7yndQMF9j3VbtPXcyokERS_eLDw
PRESS:
"...a slow-motion carousel of musical surprises, with each new sound causing you to reconsider the context of what you’ve already heard...'Songs For And About Ghosts' feels like a revelation...because it understands the multivalence of our times, neatly encapsulating the idea that outrage, joy and most every other
emotion coexist within a click." - Pitchfork
"At any given moment in this opening cut from Songs For And About Ghosts, you might find yourself lost amid a heavenly choir, halo-jumping into an active feedback volcano or hang-gliding under a celestial matrix of glistening strings and bells. Nonconnah — Tennessee-based married couple Zachary and Denny Corsa — are believers in drone’s positive properties. On “To Follow Us Through Fields of Lightning” they glide into a sort of non-specific shoegaze dreamspace, an area of psychoactive relativity likely to stir different memories in different audiences. One common thread: a cosmic, psychic cleansing." - SPIN's 30 Best Songs Of 2021 (So Far)
"You’ve got to dig down remarkably deep before you even get a sense of where the lower depths of Nonconnah’s 'Songs For and About Ghosts' are located. This is a record which improbably mixes ambient impulses with a much noisier aesthetic and then approaches this recombination as though it were something drawn from a 70s prog album. Passivity isn’t what Nonconnah is peddling here – the songs are fractured into suites of seemingly unrelated sounds that coalesce when you least expect it. I can’t even imagine the pedal setup; it must look like something out of Tetsuo: The Iron Man...blooms into a phantasmagoric landscape of daily life. From the smallest detail, such as rearranging the letters on a side table, to more significant events, such as saying “I love you” for the first time to your significant other of only three months, this music captures the minutiae and macrocosms of human reality. Welcome to the soundtrack of your life." - Beats Per Minute's Best Ambient Albums Of 2021
"The entire album (Songs For And About Ghosts) is a stunning, singular experience, blurring the lines between magical euphoria and soul-crushing despair." - AllMusic
"...the haunting is palpable, even confrontational, as spirals of searing guitars and mangled samples arise like pillars of blackened smoke over an anxious horizon...with the swirling of an infinite eddy that
not even death can escape." - The Wire
"...these bubbling minds create music that drifts from water-damaged campfire folk to space-age synths to Fennesz-worth electronic glitch meditations. Throughout, haunting voices speak in passages that echo both dystopian mind control and profound pastoral verse. But what sticks most with Unicorn Family is all the atmospheres and textures the Corsas conjure, making the whole thing feel like a sonic séance."
- Bandcamp Daily, The Best Experimental Music On Bandcamp: April 2023
"An absolute godsend...the husband/wife duo of Zachary and Denny Wilkerson Corsa lead what is possibly the most consistently fascinating and wonderful shoegaze/drone project around…when I say that Don't Go Down to Lonesome Holler could have probably been an equally brilliant six- or nine-hour album, it is not hyperbole…this album is an absolute revelation…it all fits together perfectly into an immersive and truly mind-expanding tour de force…if these truly are the end times, at least we got an absolutely stunning album out of it as a consolation prize. I realize it is only July, but I feel quite confident in declaring this to be my favorite album of the year, as trying to imagine anything more ambitious, zeitgeist-capturing, and visionary being released between now and December makes my synapses fizzle and smoke." - Brainwashed
"...expertly stitched together into beautifully layered and evocative soundscapes teeming with cool tape effects, thought-provoking samples, and killer shoegaze-inspired guitar work. In short, business as usual, but Nonconnah's business is consistently being one of the greatest drone projects on earth, so this is already a lock for one of my favorite albums of the year...I was also newly struck by how singularly Nonconnah succeed at making ambient/drone music feel deeply personal and sometimes even profound...in fact, it often feels like great Nonconnah songs exist solely to frame a fleeting glimpse of deep wisdom for maximum impact...this whole album is absolutely sublime and feels like the best kind of fever dream. I will be filing Unicorn Family right next to Nate Scheible's Fairfax on my "Albums That Are Sometimes So Profoundly Beautiful That I Feel Like
I Imagined Them" shelf." - Brainwashed
"…achingly beautiful and intricately layered sound collages. When Denny and Zachary are at their best, they are damn near untouchable, as I can think of no one else who so organically blurs together naked beauty, go-for-broke psychotropic brilliance, and immersive textural richness…the Corsas are making some of the most sublime, absorbing, and vividly textured music on earth right now...this is easily one of the finest albums that I have heard this year." - Brainwashed
"I have been loving Nonconnah’s wild, brilliant trip, Unicorn Family...make sure to pick a copy of the Unicorn Family tape before it’s too late." - Foxy Digitalis
"They create music that is rich in depth and details, fluid and exploratory. Electronics burst into life across melodic fieldscapes, underlit by waves of emotion. Their latest, Unicorn Family, is an expansive reverie that taps into an otherworldly domain and channels a forgotten spirit back into the light. It may feel like too much at any given moment, but we’re rewarded once we make it through." - Foxy Digitalis
"Nonconnah’s pursuit of a defiantly arty, unusually ghostly way to redefine whatever US indie music is supposed to be in the 21st century didn’t let up with 2023’s Unicorn Family, where everyone from Jad Fair to Angel Marcloid aka Fire-Toolz appeared among the slew of guests. But the core remains Magpie and Denny Corsa, whose gift for songtitles like “A Small Wave Of Missing Pets In The Early 1980s” is matched by textures ranging from frazzled guitar to field recordings of testimonials to murky keyboard flows, suggesting the dying afterechoes
of a lost past." - SHFL
"Unlike many doom acts out there, Nonconnah captures an emotional power that runs deep. It’s not obvious, but the more time spent in its company, and you realise that Unicorn Family operates in multifunctional ways. It’s wonderfully off-kilter and brutally hypnotic. All told, it’s just a downright lovely record." - Sun 13
"On Unicorn Family, Corsa spearheads an experimental doomgaze odyssey that lights up the darkest places in the mind...there’s a freedom in Corsa’s creative endeavors that permeates an honesty often lost throughout
the art world. - Sun 13
"The best collage music for me has the explicit presence of an editorial voice, and hand, but not in broadcasting the cleverness or sophistication of its owner, rather in spectrally reifying a version of one’s own reality, a past presently reimagined or an altogether imagined past. If you have those tools, you have the right, and you will get it right. Nonconnah have been getting it right for years. We’re just catching up." - Shallow Rewards
'...particularly beautiful assemblage of ambient Americana…a fascinating, beautiful, thought-provoking and engaging listen that you will want to revisit again and again.' - Spectrum Culture
"...they continue creating experimental lo-fi music that pushes boundaries and defies easy categorization. Built from a large cache of effects pedals and treated guitars, loops and samples, a host of unorthodox instruments, and unconventional recording techniques, the music is ambitious and their albums often feel like one continuous movement exploring what feels like an endless amount of possibilities. This is music made for intimate spaces, where you have the time and patience to devote to peeling back its layers and losing yourself inside of them...their third album, Songs For and About Ghosts, feels like a massive leap...the four lengthy suites (and four smaller ones within each of them) carve out a world full of beauty, ripe with a sense of wonder but with a lingering despair...the result is a truly stunning and rewarding experience that amounts to some
of their best work yet." - Beats Per Minute
"...the howls of haunted media, fluttery half-recorded-over melodies, an accumulation of memories, the layers of time, a cresting wave of drone, a triumphant song rising up from the beyond...part of the charm of Nonconnah has been the inclusion of Americana thrown into their soup of post-rock, drone,
and shoegaze influences." - A Closer Listen
"This is a remarkable curio cabinet littered with aural treasures. It's brilliantly original, occasionally disturbing, at times meditative and brimming with frayed ambience. I'm back up for air to declare this (Unicorn Family) as one of the year's standouts." - The Clutch And The Flywheel
"...an almost-visible renewal of energy can be felt, sending seismic shockwaves through the music, which jitters with an uncontrolled excitement, and even joy...a gorgeous record which constantly twinkles and glimmers with sweetness and light." - Fluid Radio
"Featuring a plethora of lush atmospherics paired and layered with sublime string noodling, the sounds draw the listener in, beckoning them to stick around a while….." - Eternity Tree
"Fragile bursts of brighter light are found in Nonconnah's music, which is dusted with pixie dust, making her music magical through its strings of folk and kaleidoscopic, lo-fi drowsiness. Songs For And About Ghosts is a magnificent record that constantly sparkles and shines with sweetness and light...Nonconnah are treading
on new ground." - Rock Decibels
“Truly immersive…a stunning dronegaze saga.” - US Rocker
"A beautiful, multi-varied sound tapestry orchestrated in guitar, synth, effects and technique...quite gorgeous...this may just be their best yet." - ISSUES
"Nonconnah carve beautiful sonic sculptures from sheets of glacial sound." - Migraine Robot Radio
"...as if a couple of shadowy figures had set up an old, no longer fully functional gramophone in a blizzard...on this EP, winter appears again as a mysterious season." - African Paper
"The result is something textured and intricate, but no easier to pin down. Perhaps, in that way, the album’s title is especially fitting, evoking something supernatural and strange, something best glimpsed out of the corner
of the eye." - The Memphis Flyer
"Nononnnah have delivered a collection of music that is the very definition of beguiling. From the outset this stuff is immediate, engaging, mesmeric....if you have a mate that says shit like ‘Yeah, but what’s the point in drone rock?’ you can respond, ‘Dead Roses, Digged up Zombies, Broken Pieces of Diamonds,
Live Cats’." - Popbollocks
"Abstracting the states of awareness induced by our machines, mentalities and media is what the best visual art regularly does in the contemplative surroundings of a gallery, and this album, with many layers of rich, visceral sonic textures packed into each track, does much the same. Give it a listen and imagine where a slow, increasingly unearthly elevator ride into space might take you." - The Memphis Flyer
"As gloriously spectral as ever...haunted Americana at its finest." - The Wire
"...hushed moments of uncomplicated beauty...rich and complex, capable of coaxing surprisingly
deep emotions to the surface." - The 405
"The droning soundscapes...are as disorienting as they are absorbing." - The Austin Chronicle
"A noisy but tender selection of shoegaze-influenced drone music...it's like awakening thousands of years from now on a distant planet and the first thing your android eyes see is a gorgeous alien sunrise." - ISSUES
"I’ve gorged on this album over the past few days, it’s wonderful. Apart from a few other bits and pieces I’ve not really listened to much else in that time. It’s an hour of superbly crafted noise and drones." - I Heart Noise
"Nonconnah really deliver with this full length – providing a listen that is truly rewarding and only
improves on repeat." - Eternity Tree
"It is quite impressive how this - in the most positive sense of the word - fragmentary and fragmented music and this high number of tracks does not create a fragmentary work, but a coherent album that reveals more details with each new listen." - African Paper
"Never less than a sonic feast covered in the best condiments, sometimes all at once." - Tiny Mix Tapes
"Tempts the listener to be impaled on the sonic rocks hidden in the aural spectre. The music is deep and
complex adding to its devilishly dark sonic imagery. This is very cool stuff as we have come to expect from
this accomplished group." - Floorshime Zipper Boots
"...like a sea of pleasant crystalline sounds and trippy washed-out psychedelic auras." - Doodlehound
"...like alien signals coming in over the radio at 2:00 AM, half-heard conversations in cryptic languages,
occult investigations gone awry, and blissful walks down country lanes. Sometimes all at once." - More Music
"Sorta ecstatic, which lends a trippy yet happy feel." - Deep In The Music
"The duo Nonconnah, which emerged from the Lost Trail project, has often been a topic on these pages. One may find rudiments of drone, post rock and shoegaze in Nonconnah's music, but on numerous releases Zachary and Denny Corsa ultimately played their very own, genre-busting and hardly categorizable, noisy, enraptured music...great release." - African Paper
"...bliss blistering and heavenly haloing, a beautifully serene renewal veers into view bathing all in a deeply spiritual oneness...really is most beguiling." - Mark Losing Today
"Purists, take heart. This is the sort of drone that allows you to simply put it on, lay back on that couch, and drift into the stasis pod." - The 405
"...you’ll be pleased to know that their trademark noxious soundscapes and aural degradation flourish here in seamless abundance with all the beauty one’d expect." - I Heart Noise
"...The title of the album, its cover, the song titles (how’s ‘Our Secrets Kept Forever’?) all speak of that borderline where intrigue, excitement, joy, insecurity and fear all intermingle and cross into each other’s territory. In essence, it is music of creating an atmosphere that shifts in mood..." - Echoes and Dust
"...full on experimental drones and ambient escapades in the cold nether regions of experimental music. Deep and dense, with field recordings, synths and noise, the EP brings to light sinister grey scenes and imagery that will satiate the most forlorn wintry soul. Embrace the cold, dark reality of the season and hunker down by the fire with imaginative ambient textures and unique sonic themes." - Floorshime Zipper Boots
"The expressive depths and heights achieved within TG&TG are nothing short of astonishing. The moment when music surpasses mental satisfaction and achieves spiritual satisfaction is both uplifting and grounding....with songs moving past beautifully like unknown towns through your car window. Tones evoke nostalgia, melancholy, humble warmth and old wisdom. A delicate balance of pain and purity, wistfully guiding the listener in a tour of emotion...a rich and satisfying experience." - Eternity Tree
"The fuzzy image adorning the cover matches this noisy liminal music, which puts the listener in a strange state between waking and sleeping, and which perhaps represents winter in all its ambivalence." - African Paper
"Initial appearances can be deceiving, because Nonconnah’s new album seems to warp over time. The husband and wife duo were Lost Trail in a past life, but their music together has shifted into a new season. Much of that earlier sound is still intact: those hazy, spectral layers are added to dreamy harmonies that sleepwalk through thickets and brambles, walking in the soft autumn light and then going further beyond." - Fluid Radio
"The EP reflects a season in suspension, drawing a line from the fallen leaves to the snow, separating the piano notes like flakes. A sense of distancing envelops these tracks, as if removed from the gaudy segment of festivities. There is deep contemplation to be found here, and sullen, rusted beauty." - A Closer Listen
"Powerful and beautiful at the same time!" - Yeah I Know It Sucks
"Deliver(s) a chilly blast through the room....the glacial floe minds the listener of the sounds
of creaking ice." - Emerging Indie Bands
"...further develops their wondrously perceptive strain of musical history." - Notes From Left Of The Dial
"A subtle and blissful gathering of sounds." - Eternity Tree
"...spacious, broad, quiet, with an emptiness that might mean melancholy to some listeners,
freedom to others." - Chain DLK
"A long journey through the sound of light and the things found along the starlit path. the album also presents something alien to most people making it particularly unique. The odd sounds, guest stars, and care given across the album are what sets this above..." - Skull Valley
"This vagueness of sounds, in which they are similar yet out of focus and indistinct, is typical of
the Nonconnah sound." - Evilsponge
"Hard to describe this album without getting carried away...a wide open space where huge walls of guitars brush up against drones that sound like signals from the deep woods. There's fragments of songs, esoteric speeches and an underlying sense of mystery, as well as kindness. Take the epic post-rock of Godspeed! You Black Emperor then immerse it in rainbows and forests until it starts to spin on the spot like a dervish, joyously. No matter how many times I play it, it never ceases to delight...I know I'm the label guy but would you judge me if I told you it was a masterpiece? Because I am telling you. May this beauty never end." - Was Ist Das?
#2 Electronic/Techno Album of 2017, The Memphis Flyer
#41, Brainwashed Reader's Poll - Top 100 Albums Of 2021
RESIDENCIES:
Composer's residency, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center For The Arts, Nebraska City, Nebraska, 12/22