Interestingly, two of the “specification” pieces, eleven, and fourteen, appear here, constructed as they were with long time collaborator, and label buddy, Taylor Deupree. These highly reduced atmospheres exemplify the modus operandi of both composers, where simplistic tonalism is layered and juxtaposed with other organic elements to create shimmering surfaces, and pastel colours. I was also heartened by the inclusion of “untitled” from Canada’s 1.8 Records, and “improvisation_122904b” on Portugal’s Grain of Sound, both in themselves important pieces for very small, specialised labels. The former being almost pure synth, framed with organic particulates, the latter using rich, expansive, reverberant tonal stabs, that veers into almost dark ambient territory. Followers of Chartier will no doubt be fully aware of his considerable influence on modern minimalism, and for the neophyte, this is a vital and essential access point to his work, and numerous approaches. Highly recommended. BGN

www.koyuki-sound.org

Josh Russell | Music For Geiger Counters

Luigi Turra | Texture vitra

In sharp contrast to his recent “Enso” release, Luigi Turra explores a more restrained pallete of sounds. Texture Vita is essentially a tone-work, a thought-provoking, deeply meditative piece opening with a shifting, tonal bass layer, that sounds like the lower notes of a piano, caught in a timeless loop, topped off with a slender, granular skrim. The whole piece is an interpretative field recording, gleaned from two omni-directional microphones, inside and outside architect Tadao Ando’s project, Vitra Seminar House. This is a hugely atmospheric condensation of elements of the immediate area, where scrapings and creakings billow with muscular reverb, slowly descending into darker, and virtually inaudible realms, with a characteristic “barely there” aesthetic. Something drum-like here is being gently rolled around, engendering deeply resonant tonalities, whilst high above, and in the more treble sound register, there are various metallic movements, encapsulated within a rotating bass layer. Texture Vitra is a masterful slab of evocative minimalism, and once again, Koyuki Sound have firmly established themselves as a minimalist label of considerable stature. A full length release beckons? BGN

www.room40.org

Radio Flirt essentially picks up on themes originally visited by Robin Rimbaud’s now infamous Scanner releases on Ash International more than a decade ago. Famed for their incendiary and intrusive nature, Scanner made his reputation with a series of highly charged and voyeuristic recordings of “found” voices, that ranged from the strange and surreal, to the downright ordinary.

La Belle and Webb have taken their Radio Flirt installation piece, and re-presented it for mass consumption in CD format, re-jigging a kind of personal, narrative poetry, and threading it through a fabric of feedback, radio static, and all manner of electronic soundscaping in much the same way as Scanner did all those years ago.

Contrary to the accompanying press release, that boldly states that the piece is “..an intimate audio experience that aims for the heart and explores the emotional geographies of listening..” I found much of the work here to be sterile, and somewhat staged, almost theatrical in nature, and lacking any of the grit and sharply focussed realism embodied in the Scanner recordings. Perhaps I am drawing an unfair comparison here, and maybe this is just not my cup of tea, but without the voices, and vocalisations, this would have been a much stronger piece, as the bulk of what is being said has little or no tangible reference points, and very little emotive strength. Technically, there is little to challenge, as the recording is crisp and superbly executed, but it’s all just a little too “artful”, and contrived, and for me never got to a second listen (always the litmus test). I’m sure Messrs LaBelle and Webb will no doubt challenge my perspective, but for me, this just wasn’t working, and juxtaposed with raster noton’s recent “Coh Plays Cosey” vocal excursion, which demonstrates a highly original, and incisively creative approach to the medium, Radio Flirt pales in comparison. Very sorry. BGN

  www.room40.org

Turntablist extraordinaire, ERIKM, has seen fit to realise this collection of tracks for Australia’s ROOM 40 imprint. Now compounding his reputation for a near virtuoso turntabling technique, combined with an armoury of electronic tools and effects, ERIKM has taken ten one minute samples burned onto a CD, which was then further treated and damaged. He then took these damaged pieces and reconfigured them, subjecting them to further distortions and deconstructions, to form an oblique, minimalist tapestry of harsh digital sounds. After an initial burst of signal, we are then plunged into a visceral soundscape (Ressac), full of stuttering, flickering textures. This really sets the tone for the rest of the collection in an impressively rendered series of exquisitely crafted digi-scapes.

Protracted silences are beset with jewelled interstices of glistening electronica. 5^th track, Game, utilises a fuller pallette, and takes us into further reaches of the audible spectrum – here, bass tonalism gives way to eviscerated microsonics, and once again, we are drawn into ultra minimal sound-play. White Out forms around a gassy, almost industrial backdrop, subtly stippled with high overtones, a pale drone piece, unimpeded by the usual pitfalls of the genre.

Dissenters will no doubt liken much of Steme to early musique concret, revised and revisited, setting a path for the new generations of avant garde, however, ERIKM maintains a genuine joy, and love of the medium, in a playful, intelligent, and maturely crafted collection, that is both inspiring and original.BGN.

COH Plays Cosey..an intimate visitation, a conjoining of two primal forces of the avant garde. Cosey’s voice, and vocalisations become the impetus for COH’s (Ivan Pavlov) rigorous splice and dice texturalisms…a sampladelic excursion, an explosion of cut and paste figments and fragments. Cosey’s explicit and intensely personal poetry, touches on areas of post modernist feminism, raising issues of honesty, trust and privacy - COH twists and subverts the source material, releasing a new tonality, re-interpreting and re-energising the voice, generating exquisite, invigorating rhythms from Cosey’s striated poetry. From these desolate deformations, particles of breath bloom and wither, fractured sentences and half-hidden meanings twist ands swirl, time stretched and plasticised, yet somehow still transmissible, still discernable as voice rather than digital discord. Here and there, the voice appears cybernetic, Cosey rendered in harsh electronic tonalities, an avatar operating in an expansive virtual netherworld, reconstituting itself elsewhere in its original form. LOST is a haunting, endless loop, again time stretched and deconstructed, a blurry, visceral piece that is as beautiful as it is un-nerving.

At some point, Cosey will reverse the operation in a follow up release, “Cosey Plays COH” . Presumably here, an opportunity for a reversal of roles, and no doubt an opposing technique, perhaps something more organic, in direct opposition to COH’s hard digital processing..we can only guess. But for now, COH plays Cosey demonstrates the promise of this ongoing collaboration, a meeting of minds, a fusion of voice and processed electronics, a gathering of opposites. BGN

Sound installation is enjoying a boom period currently, as many sound workers explore all of its elements and ramifications, the depth of ingenuity at times is quite astounding. Peters’ work here is formed from distillations of sound gleaned from room atmospherics, with no additional instrumentation or manipulation, it becomes an eerie document of the minutiae of sounds and reverberations spilling from empty spaces, with additional input coming from sounds that breach the space from outside. Peters slices fragments of these reverberations into layers of frequency, and uses this material as the fabric of his work.

Each piece isolates and dissects sounds which are then gated and equalised, with little or no additional processing. What emerges is a spare, yet highly charged soundscape, with subtle tonal shifts and incursions. Filtered Light is part of a series called Chamber Music that explores empty spaces, and indeed Peters work engages with issues of place, presence, perception, attention and duration. I would also add memory to that list, as many places actively “record” the events contained within them, and in Filtered Light, Peters has released these sounds , placing them under a microscope for further analysis. Given the economy of means at his disposal, Peters has bootstrapped a fine work into existence, using the sonic DNA of a building to form a cerebral and intensely engaging piece. Highly recommended. BGN

A skeleton soon and then forever.

This edition of 250 showcases the work of guitarist, Marc Manning. Occupying territory somewhere between the delicate restraint of a typical 12k release, and with slight jazz infusions, not dissimilar to some of David Sylvian’s recent forays, this is an elegant work of textural strings, using reverb, multi-tracking, and a variety of other elements to build around. The album consists almost solely of guitar, and effects are used to form atmosphere and dynamics. Manning deploys a variety of compositional techniques, creating scrolls of delicacy, wispy tracts like “Not any time soon”, or “Not forever but for a long time”, with their dreamy, almost transcendental moods and shifts. For guitar experimentalists out there, don’t expect Fennesz’s influence here, as Manning uses the instrument in it’s purest form, unadulterated,and unaltered,a work of profound beauty, and stark simplicity. BGN

www.thelandof.org 

Asher – Intervals

With an ever growing catalogue of works behind him, Asher is now one of a steadily growing army of refreshingly original sound-workers whose work infuses the catalogues of labels such as Con-V, leerraum[ ], Mystery Sea, Term, and others.

Intervals explores and investigates our perceptions of time through a series of 39 highly restrained, and minutely wrought pieces. We are advised to listen to the collection in “random shuffle” mode, in order to plunge ourselves into a sequence of diverse and evolving soundscapes, providing us with endless permutations of the same atmospheres. This is not unlike the aural equivalent of an experimental Ballard or Burroughs novel, whereby the audience expectations are actively short-circuited- the piece can be entered from any point, and disjunctions and discontinuities are actively encouraged. Here audience becomes editor, but more importantly, we also become the closing link of the composition, completing a cycle of events initiated by its composer.

The source recordings for this work represent atmospheres culled from the inside and the outside of Goddard College, Plainfield Vermont, although the location here is not of any intrinsic importance. What is important is that we are suspended in between external and internal moments – the “intervals” of the title, fused and frozen memories that are simultaneously familiar, yet slightly unsettling. Combined with the refreshingly delcious day-glo cover , with explicit and well constructed sleeve notes, this is possibly one of my favourite releases of the year so far..not a cliché, nor hint of plagiarism in sight..an artist and label that I for one, will be watching closely. Sound art of the highest order. BGN

www.glacialmovments.com Poised as it is, as the first official release in Glacial Movements’ “WURM” series, Oophoi offer up a glistening, expansive ambient workout, not unlike several of the multitude of ambient artists operating at the turn of the noughties. Oophoi summarise their work as an “airy drone with minimal variations”, actively attempting to side step some of the pitfalls and cliches attached to any sonic interpretation of cold and icy landscapes, and in doing so, manage to summon up some of the energy reminiscent of the early era of ambient music.