Between the title, one of the simplest and most universal phrases in the English language, and the cover art, a commonplace portrait of the planet Earth from outer space, Jason Urick’s latest album I Love You seems to be pursuing an aesthetic that’s as neutralized and devoid of detail or personality as possible. The only thing he could’ve done to make the exterior packaging of the album more generic would be to change his last name to Smith. But that’s not to say that I Love You suffers from a lack of ideas or creative expression. If anything, the album is a culmination of a running theme in Urick’s music, which often takes very specific source material, and stretches and manipulates the samples until they become abstract and ostensibly meaningless, sound for sound’s sake.

Although Urick, a longtime fixture of Baltimore underground music, recently located on Portland, Oregon, I Love You was partly recorded at Floristree, the Baltimore performance space he previously ran and lived in. Like the 2010 album Husbands and Urick’s other solo releases on Thrill Jockey Records since the breakup of his band Wzt Hearts, I Love You is a collection of a handful of lengthy tracks, mostly running from six to ten minutes, each with its own particular palette of sounds that slowly unfurl in subtle variations. It’s a headphone album in the classic sense, with the pure aural beauty of its best moments being derived primarily from the way the sounds drift from the left to right channel or vice versa.

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Last month Mobtown and The Windup Space produced a week-long festival that highlighted (mostly) Baltimore instrumental bands. The festival was called NOVO (ie. No Vocals).

Russell (Windup’s owner and a generally swell guy who also makes a mean Jim and Coke) curated the shows (with a little help from us) and I recorded and mixed every night with Alex, with the plan to release the tracks on Aural States as an extension of the festival.

Some of the bands included Nathan Bell (Human Bell, Lungfish) featuring Ami Dang, Microkingdom, Jason Urick (WZT Hearts), Expanding Man, Yeveto, Insect Factory, Notendo, We Used To Be Family, JDay, Dustin Wong (Ponytail), The Water and members of the Out Of Your Head collective.

We had an awesome turnout and we’re already in the planning stages for 2011. Props to David at TeamAdelle for all the hard work on the visuals and design and Tedd Henn from HennPict for the wonderful photography. Here are some audio samples of my favorite performances. You can stream and download the entire festival over at Aural States.

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Jason Urick is the kind of ubiquitous figure in Baltimore underground music that you’re bound to have tripped over at one point or another if you’ve spent any time in the scene, whether he was organizing the Once.Twice Festival, running the DIY venue Floristree, working at the record store the Sound Garden, or playing in the noise band Wzt Hearts. But it’s only now, a year after that group’s breakup, that Urick has issued his first solo album on Thrill Jockey.

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