Chlorine’s Joseph Mangum lets his memories bleed through the page

In the creation of new Chlorine album Things That Are Lost, Kentucky musician Joseph Mangum first experimented with tape loops, dusting off past recordings and “using them as tone setters to weave in and build around,” he said in an early October phone call.

In doing so, Mangum instinctively continued to interrogate the idea of memory – a concept he also delved heavily into on the previously recorded and still-unreleased Damaged Memories – tracing this draw in part to a recent fascination with the blurring effect that has comes with age.

“Getting older, I find myself not having the same detail when remembering things from when I was younger,” said Mangum, who brings Chlorine to Rambling House for a 7 p.m. concert on Thursday, Oct. 15, performing alongside the Dolphins (here behind new record Too Far Up Then Down), Columbus’ Son of Dribble (currently working toward new LP Son of Dribble Stares at the Fire), and Calico Boy (Val Glenn’s return to the stage following a seven-year absence). “But at the same time, there’s this transfer of feeling, where I remember things more in terms of if they were positive or negative, or if they got me really up or really down. And I’ve been fascinated with the fact things can be boiled down to that and the details sort of just wash away.”

Things That Are Lost, in turn, is rich on feeling, Mangum and Co. engaging one another in a collective world-building that resulted in a a series of fuzzy-edged songs that could play as the score to a waking dream. Witness the droning “Wilderness of Mirrors,” which builds around a repeated bird call, hollow percussive smacks, cautiously stepping synthesizer, and vocals that resonate like ancient chants. Then there’s the hypnotic, 10-plus minute title track, which weaves together ambient synths, quick-twitch percussion, and detached, echoey vocals. “Every day the sun comes up,” Mangum sings, “every night the world dies.”

Aspects of this excavation were rooted in grief, with Mangum having lost a close relative early in Covid at a time when the surrounding chaos left little time for emotional processing. “And I think there’s probably some delayed working through things, especially on Damaged Memories, where I set out to write about that,” he said. “And then Things That Are Lost just kind of happened, probably more so than any batch of songs I’ve ever made. I didn’t plan anything in a really concrete way. I just sat down and was making stuff, and then it seemed like it completed itself.”

Walking through this creative process, Mangum then recalled a series of paintings done years before by an artist friend, who would create an image on the top page of a notebook, inking it so heavily that parts bled into the page below. He would then use these enduring “ghosts” as the jump off for his next image, each successive work imbued with at least some of the DNA from what came before.

Entirely by accident, Mangum has adopted a similar approach to making music, each album containing at least some echo of the prior. Things That Are Lost, for instance, includes the tracks “Anamnesia I and II,” both of which serve as musical ripples extended from a song of the same name that appeared on Damaged Memories. 

“And it didn’t even occur to me until the records were done, the covers were screen printed, where I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Now that’s on my notebook,’ so to speak,” said Mangum, who allowed that this approach hasn’t always been immediately evident owing to his tendency to shelve or hold certain releases when new inspiration takes hold. “Even with this show, most of what we play will be from the next record, if I’m being honest. … And so, the thing that gets seen publicly might seem more disconnected, because I have a tendency to finish full-length albums that I don’t know what to do with. … But, yeah, there’s definitely this element of picking up where we left off, because each time there is usually one or two things that I want to revisit and expand on. And I think that’s one of the things that sort of pushes the boat off the shore to get into something else.”

Following a pair of records that perhaps focused more intently inward, the musician wrestling with past experiences and how they might have shaped the person he has come to be, Mangum said the newest songs appear to have taken this idea and expand it outward.

“I think it’s taking a broader view of what life has been for me … and talking more of how everything connects to everything else,” he said. “I don’t know. I’ll probably be better equipped to answer that question in a month or two. … Right now, I’m in that phase where it’s like, ‘Is that guitar where it needs to be?” where I’m almost a janitor in my own house. Then, once I get it where I want it, I’ll let it sit for a while. And when I go back to it, that’s typically when I start to really notice where the songs are tethered together.”