Flying Scroll Flight Control

Half-handed Cloud’s John Ringhofer began writing songs for what would become Flying Scroll Flight Control a few months after the release of 2010’s Stowaways album. He’d married, moved out of the Berkeley, CA church he’d lived in since 2003, and into an Oakland, CA co-housing community. The album features a 5-person female choir, manipulated recording tape, fuzz bass, clarinet, some piano, a child’s Magnus air organ, rhythmic zipper, trombone, a cushioned stylophone stick, and intermittent backpacker guitar. As a holdover from the Belgian demos, Ringhofer and friends also frequently repurposed objects into instruments for homemade sound effects—not unlike Beuys’ use of honey, fat, or hare’s blood as painting mediums. Flying Scroll Flight Control exhibits a restored perception of mystery, the magnetic draw of arcane and peculiar visions. It gathers sound and supplies it with structure, harmonizing the rift between the physical and the metaphysical. These are songs that sing in multiple spaces.

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Does Half-Handed Cloud sound quite a bit like Sufjan Stevens? Yes, definitely. But this is a project put out by Asthmatic Kitty and produced by none other than Stevens himself.