The world is beyond doubt flooded by people releasing industrial quantities of gobbledygook about incidents connected to speculative “illuminations” in relation to sounds that actually don’t mean a iota for the human brain, if not for lulling it to sleep by the association with comfortable suggestions of snugness and warmth typical of the blind-minded. In this case we’re dealing with physical resonances that many of those desperate entities regard as sheer noise while keeping the chit-chat a propos of supposed next lives and evolutional enhancements going on, yet finding pleasure in the easiest brands of classical music of three centuries ago (so much for “progress”) or believing to cure their anxiety via so-called “prayers”.
Mark Fell, a British artist working on the fringes of artistic genres, explores “the relationships between geometry, colour and waveform” on this, a DVD where the simplicity of the utilized means is – as usual, one would say – the key for a rigorous experience of outright transcendence, not attained by listening to someone who scares the shit out of unhinged audiences by hypothesizing intimidating scenarios of boundless ignorance, usually conjured up by the consequences of an overly abundant dinner on the sleeping process. Fell achieves the objective through the adaptation of the senses to events that link our perceptive channels and organs efficiently: waveforms (mainly derived from computer-processed Tibetan bowls), geometric shapes, hues derived from barely conceivable colours.
By looking at the video we’re instantly captured as the graphic representations of the sounds manifest themselves with unmistakable precision, stopping only when the sonic substance ceases its momentary existence. The design is extremely simple, and all the more significant: intelligent waveshaping is the basis of the whole thing, relating gradations and visual oscillations to the aural involvement coming as easy as breathing for those in the know. The psyche is dazzled by the associations, its functionality improved at the same time. The music is gorgeous per se, a cycle of electronic emissions which gradually evolve from scattered surges, strident wakes and rhythmic clicks to the often literally astonishing unhurried glissandos characterizing the third and longest segment.
To quote the composer: “Are these phenomena affirmations or reconfigurations of the subject (…) or are they essentially physiological? (…) Are we being enlightened? Examined? Entertained? Enmeshed?” This writer could not answer to these questions. What’s important is that we’re not subjected to counterfeit mysticism, a constant presence – nourished by people’s discouraging weakness - hiding money-spinning intentions in today’s practices.
Attack On Silence is a sample of serious borderline ability, definitely not suitable for just-woke-up laggards.
Line
Friday, 20 February 2009
Monday, 9 February 2009
ORGANUM / Z’EV – Temporal
“Subdued” or “restrained” are not adjectives that can be stuck to this CD, chock full as it is of glorious roars and stomach-churning rumblings. Still, there’s also abundant proof of an impartial attentiveness to the flood of sonic events that indicates the stratum of acuity to which David Jackman and Z’EV elevated themselves during the production process. As the latter explains in a few lines on the sleeve, the basics were thrown by working side by side on a computer; the sacrosanct furore typical of Organum’s legendary pages was added in subsequent solitary circumstances. After all, lone wolves actually need no help; yet, given the merits of prior efforts by the duo, it looks like this particular partnership has been somehow carved in the stone of inevitability.
The three tracks – over 47 minutes – that define the structure of Temporal sound as a sort of initiation rite for someone who’s not used to be overwhelmed by the viciousness of metallic howl. Although an implicit harmonic delineation is present in a number of junctures – notably in the mind-boggling accumulation of cymbal resonances, snarling skins and holy chants that constitutes the core of “Eagle”, an ideal trait d’union between both artists’ current fields of research – listeners are left just about staggered, assaulted by acoustic incidents weakening the fortifications of their personal fortress from every front, without actually realizing what exactly is hitting the ears, if not for a vague sense of blurred responsiveness. More than discerning the effects of reverberating percussions, we feel like escorted by an imperishable angst: one foresees the end of existence while benefiting from extensive portions of unadulterated ecstasy. Distress and enchantment indeed, the admiration for this type of artistic solemnity absolutely inescapable.
This material wraps our ignorance in coils of choking hostility which, grisly perspectives notwithstanding, suggests a way out of discouragement through its very threat. A sensitive person’s wisdom is definitely enhanced as a result of continual sessions with such a record, one of the most bad-tempered displays of creative integrity in recent times. Die Stadt’s unfaltering heart does not skip a beat: we’re fortunate that a label on this level of trustworthiness still exists.
A five-star album for a starless future.
Die Stadt
The three tracks – over 47 minutes – that define the structure of Temporal sound as a sort of initiation rite for someone who’s not used to be overwhelmed by the viciousness of metallic howl. Although an implicit harmonic delineation is present in a number of junctures – notably in the mind-boggling accumulation of cymbal resonances, snarling skins and holy chants that constitutes the core of “Eagle”, an ideal trait d’union between both artists’ current fields of research – listeners are left just about staggered, assaulted by acoustic incidents weakening the fortifications of their personal fortress from every front, without actually realizing what exactly is hitting the ears, if not for a vague sense of blurred responsiveness. More than discerning the effects of reverberating percussions, we feel like escorted by an imperishable angst: one foresees the end of existence while benefiting from extensive portions of unadulterated ecstasy. Distress and enchantment indeed, the admiration for this type of artistic solemnity absolutely inescapable.
This material wraps our ignorance in coils of choking hostility which, grisly perspectives notwithstanding, suggests a way out of discouragement through its very threat. A sensitive person’s wisdom is definitely enhanced as a result of continual sessions with such a record, one of the most bad-tempered displays of creative integrity in recent times. Die Stadt’s unfaltering heart does not skip a beat: we’re fortunate that a label on this level of trustworthiness still exists.
A five-star album for a starless future.
Die Stadt
LUIGI ARCHETTI – Fragments On Speed, Slowless And Tedium
“Slowless”???
Was it spelled like that on purpose? Did “Slowness” constitute the initial intention? I’d be willing to know if there’s a secret rationalization behind this word, a silly curiosity of mine that shouldn’t detract from the crystalline grace of this release, entirely realized – one would say – with a guitar and a computer yet sounding as a million different things.
Luigi Archetti, an Italian-born Swiss resident, is a regular presence on the experimental scene of the last decades. Besides being a guitarist and composer, he also works in the visual field (painting, installations, drawing and video) and has collaborated with a veritable who’s who of fringe artists around the globe, including Iva Bittova, Guru Guru’s Mani Neumeier, Cluster’s Dieter Moebius, Bill Horist, Taku Sugimoto, Can’s Michael Karoli and Damo Suzuki, Bo Wiget, just to list a few. Lots of dissimilar visions, many of them probably influencing the man’s inventiveness in a way or another.
The nineteen “Fragments” develop hundreds of links and connections between silence, noise and understanding of vibratory phenomena through fundamental gestures, improvisations captured by their originator in critical (…cryptic?) intelligibility then subjected to a systematic treatment which not only renders the original source almost untraceable and, in some cases, completely extraneous, but literally alters our methods of approaching a recording by “looking forward to something”. Archetti gives a short illusion of familiarity then shifts the burden of pulsation elsewhere, often abruptly, otherwise gradually, always settling on the accurate spot where “that” ringing chord (or inharmonious symptom, for that matter) makes all the sense in the world. It’s a phantasmagoria of misshapen outlines and nearly irrational timbres, the axe as a sound generator over and done in favour of an overpowering logic of non-belonging: a cruel condition for an ordinary individual to be in, absolute nirvana for those who don’t care a iota about social relationships and choose to actually behave as a living organism, thriving in the hallowed name of resonance - both corporeal and intellectual.
By pulverizing anticipation via drastic transformations of six-stringed realities, this discreet gentleman stimulates reflexes and gratitude at once, rewriting the guidelines of how an investigational guitar album should be designed while heightening the considerable necessities of people who need to be set apart from insubstantial music and diminutive IQs.
Domizil
Was it spelled like that on purpose? Did “Slowness” constitute the initial intention? I’d be willing to know if there’s a secret rationalization behind this word, a silly curiosity of mine that shouldn’t detract from the crystalline grace of this release, entirely realized – one would say – with a guitar and a computer yet sounding as a million different things.
Luigi Archetti, an Italian-born Swiss resident, is a regular presence on the experimental scene of the last decades. Besides being a guitarist and composer, he also works in the visual field (painting, installations, drawing and video) and has collaborated with a veritable who’s who of fringe artists around the globe, including Iva Bittova, Guru Guru’s Mani Neumeier, Cluster’s Dieter Moebius, Bill Horist, Taku Sugimoto, Can’s Michael Karoli and Damo Suzuki, Bo Wiget, just to list a few. Lots of dissimilar visions, many of them probably influencing the man’s inventiveness in a way or another.
The nineteen “Fragments” develop hundreds of links and connections between silence, noise and understanding of vibratory phenomena through fundamental gestures, improvisations captured by their originator in critical (…cryptic?) intelligibility then subjected to a systematic treatment which not only renders the original source almost untraceable and, in some cases, completely extraneous, but literally alters our methods of approaching a recording by “looking forward to something”. Archetti gives a short illusion of familiarity then shifts the burden of pulsation elsewhere, often abruptly, otherwise gradually, always settling on the accurate spot where “that” ringing chord (or inharmonious symptom, for that matter) makes all the sense in the world. It’s a phantasmagoria of misshapen outlines and nearly irrational timbres, the axe as a sound generator over and done in favour of an overpowering logic of non-belonging: a cruel condition for an ordinary individual to be in, absolute nirvana for those who don’t care a iota about social relationships and choose to actually behave as a living organism, thriving in the hallowed name of resonance - both corporeal and intellectual.
By pulverizing anticipation via drastic transformations of six-stringed realities, this discreet gentleman stimulates reflexes and gratitude at once, rewriting the guidelines of how an investigational guitar album should be designed while heightening the considerable necessities of people who need to be set apart from insubstantial music and diminutive IQs.
Domizil
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