Golden Retriever

Listening to Golden Retriever feels like watching a timelapse of a forest growing. There is a profound sense of breath and movement, even when the music stays rooted in place. The interplay between Jonathan Sielaff’s bass clarinet and Matt Carlson’s modular synthesizer creates a sound that is difficult to categorize: it possesses the formal elegance of modern classical music but the unpredictable, shifting energy of high-end modular synthesis.

What makes them truly distinctive is the way they treat their instruments as a single, breathing organism. Sielaff’s clarinet often sounds electronic, mimicking the oscillators of the synth, while Carlson’s patches often feel biological, pulsing with a rhythmic fragility that mirrors human breath. They avoid the coldness often associated with drone music, opting instead for a rich, amber-hued warmth that feels lived-in and deeply human.

Start with 'Rotations' or 'Seer' to experience their most refined balance of melody and texture. These albums showcase their ability to build massive, cathedral-like structures out of simple, monophonic threads, making them essential listening for anyone who finds beauty in the intersection of the acoustic and the electric.