Here we are again meeting this way under the pretense of the COVID-19 pandemic and all of it's fallout. I have been lucky enough to travel through some of the US (obviously staying away from major metros), however, I am aware that many have not. Further, the duress that many in the world are grappling with seems to only be ever-amplified in the echo-chamber that is technology and media. Ironically, in a time when we as a society are more social than ever (by some spectator accounts), we seemed unavoidably doomed to confrontations with isolation.

I say all of this not to perpetuate a misamatic situation but to lay out the framework for the newest output by Blake Edward Conley, known to you as droneroom. On ...The Other Doesn't, Conley submerges himself in the isolation delivering his most scaled down, minimal and provoking work to date. The past work of droneroom has been a cornucopia of guitar madness in its use of effect pedals, loops and textures. Undoubtedly tapping into the zeitgeist, Conley sticks to only a small handful of effects and one guitar sound to deliver a hypnotic and unique sounding release.

...The Other Doesn't can be enjoyed as individual songs, as I am sure they were composed as such. The joy of this album, however, can only be fully appreciated by the listener if they enjoy the entire record from front to back. The atmosphere contained within these 8 songs is constant and bold and yet delicate and evocative. Often I think of sound as images and in this case I envision Conley playing a metal guitar with metal pedals in a medium-sized metal room with a hint of reverb; strumming away with a sense of pensive fervor.

As we grow into the new normal I believe we will all be dealing with the isolation in ourselves, our communities and our social groups; droneroom's ...The Other Doesn't may lend a small starting point. Conley's ability to isolate himself by pairing down to only the essentials has allowed him a greater flexibility than ever before. Getting right down to what is essential and contemplating what matters, i.e. isolating, may be what frees us, makes us more innovative and allows us to join together stronger than ever with one unified sound amplifying out and above all the other noise.

Ira Kinder 7/20/20
Carlyle, IL (or somewhere close to it)

Droneroom is the solo vehicle of guitarist Blake Edward Conley and with …The Other Doesn’t, experiments of varying length and degree of severity are brought to bear. The abiding feel is spacious, lonely and cinematic as one might expect for such guitar-based soundscaping, but “Casual-Lethal Narcissism” and “The Last Time Someone Speaks Your Name” do have some measure of peace to go with their foreboding and troubling atmospherics. An obvious focal point is the 15-minute dronefest “This Circle of Ribs,” feels more forward and striking than someone of Droneroom‘s surrounding material, but it’s all on a relative scale, and across the board Conley remains a safe social distance away from structural traditionalist. Recorded during Summer 2020, it is an album that conveys the anxiety and paranoia of this year, and while that can be a daunting thing to face in such a way or to let oneself really engage with as a listener — shit, it’s hard enough just living through — one of the functions of good art is to challenge perceptions of what it can be. Worth keeping in mind for “Home Can Be a Frightening Place.”

- The Obelisk

While the Western twang is there it’s well hidden through cobwebs and secret passages of drones and other tense effects, with an autobiographical nature in its song titles. Listening to “The Other Doesn’t” evokes visions of stepping into somewhere abandoned, tense in its minimal quiet and with an atmosphere of a century or two past.

- Doodlehound.blogspot.com