Openly Weep - Flyover States

Limited to 50 copies. 

Flyover States – when used derisively – refers to the broad swath of the country between the two coastal power centers of the United States. It’s connection to and association with the powerful ruling class who only see these places as disconnected from their lives or, perhaps, places they “escaped” from to pursue careers where flyover states is used unironically.

As a follow up to Ryan Hall’s (founder of Whited Sepulchre Records) debut ambient electronic project under Openly Weep, Flyover States draws from the same well as that EP – lush ambient pads, field recordings and submerged Techno elements. Flyover States, however, finds these percussive measures becoming more pronounced, nuanced and dynamic while the human voice (drawn from highly processed samples of Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Tamar Braxton and Pleiadean channelers) weaves its way through each 5 tracks.

Written and recorded almost exclusively while traveling for Hall’s work and visiting family, portions of this EP were written on planes, in airports during layovers, in hotels and kitchen tables while visiting family and friends. Based in Cincinnati – a flyover area proudly reclaiming that phrase – these Openly Weep tracks were written in Waco and Ft. Worth, TX and in rural Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.

Flyover States was Inspired in equal parts by Robert D. Putnam’s landmark work “Bowling Alone” on the collapse of community in “flyover regions”, a deeply intense experience while visiting the remains of the Branch Davidian Complex in Waco, TX, Flannery O’Connor’s terse prose and even more terse spirituality and the salvation found in transgression in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. There is a framework within each track that handles both transcendence and depressive realism without giving into the escapism of each.

Hauntological Future Garage, The Sight Below’s sunken House and the bleakness and beauty of DJ Healer and UK ambient artist Romance swirl towards a deep center of these tracks that pushes against nihilism and depressive hedonia and serves as a protective hex against inaction.