DANIEL MENCHE - Kataract

Once again, the inexpressible sense of potency received as a gift from Daniel Menche’s experiments affirms its dominance, this time in a 39-minute piece based on recordings of waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest, processed and enhanced in the studio with some measure of electronics.

The compositional configuration in Kataract follows an arc of sorts, an itinerary defined by ominous, devastating and, at the end of the day, spellbinding tones. The initial pulse is accompanied by an intimidating kind of reverberation, akin to the animal perception of an earthquake that’s about to become manifest. It doesn’t take too much for the massive wall of noise to come out and destroy as the liquid sources are corrupted and re-sequenced, thus giving life to varying degrees of dynamic shift and shape modification. We hear feedback, synthetic waves, heavy percussion, powerful wind, aircrafts, even screaming – but, as always, it’s all a figment of our imagination.

What we get for real instead is the quintessence of a positive brutality generated by natural phenomena. The mastery in Menche’s craft transforms this simple yet critical element in a means for entering a state of transcendence typical of his finest creations; so remotely distant from the discounted amassments and alterations recorded on CDR by a gazillion of wannabes. He collects sonic essences by exploiting the intensification and the inside structures of an environmental occurrence, letting the beneficiaries understand the parameters and the regulations that, ultimately, are innate in every type of chaos.

When the incessant ferocity is finally placated and the music directs towards an adequate conclusion (strangely enough, with a sound that recalls an amplified flow gurgling down a drain underlined by impressive subsonics), one feels like having been invulnerable throughout. On the contrary, a superior force just overwhelmed us. This artist is an unsurpassed extractor of harmonic significance from wholesome violence, and we’ve been shouting this for almost 20 years now.

Editions Mego

FRANK ROTHKAMM – Alt

Two synonyms associated to Rothkamm's name considered as an adjective – frank – are “open” and “transparent”; that’s exactly what the tracks shaping this record feel like. Thanks to a set of algorithms and computers put in motion without secondary human intervention, we benefit from a valuable therapy consisting of uncomplicated – minimal, you may say - electronic designs that, at the same time, are austerely efficient and, in a couple of examples, plainly stunning.

“Gui” utilizes a modified sliding guitar sample as a hooking “theme” in such a tantalizing fashion that Wim Wenders might wish to grab it for the second edition of Paris, Texas; “OOO” makes us wonder instead if a reiteration of overlaid choir scraps is indeed the sound that will be heard after our vanishing. Perhaps the main aspect to be chewed over is the music's overall tendency to reveal facets that are both positively “present-day” and hinting to the past. More than “ambient”, in fact, one tends to think about certain episodes as some sort of slowed-down development of constructions grown from selected branches of the German cosmic era. The impeccable linearity and the untainted geometry of these structures are definitely relatable to that area of exploration.

This notwithstanding, a clear reference to the typically uncompromising traits of Rothkamm's work is also detectable. Creativity that doesn't need excess to affirm its value, only the sureness and the deep conviction that an idea, or even a single fragment, is sufficient for the instigation of an important artistic signal if that lone element is given the proper light and angles. There lie the rewarding aspects of Alt, sounds that enhance the positive features perceived by the mind during a listening session, stimulating a dynamic response that goes well beyond the mere “I appreciate it/I don't” feedback.

Baskaru

PETER WRIGHT – An Angel Fell Where The Kestrels Hover

For starters, can anybody find a better title? Difficult, I’d say. Peter Wright tickles once again the drowsy end of consciousness, for the occasion excluding barbed-wire distortion to cuddle the responsive audience with his trademark protracted reverberations, jangling overlays (courtesy of those celebrated 12 strings) and, in general, overstretched hallucinations. This music constantly hides – good or bad things, it doesn’t matter – thus forcing that moment’s mental position to shift. We decide that something must be done, because what’s currently happening is not leading us anywhere.

So, following a short gentle intro (“Fell Asleep Here”), you let the entrancement of “Sunstroke” take command and starts daydreaming about some sort of impalpable truth that might be expecting behind the corner, a place where everything works as planned and you’re not supposed to struggle for what should be due – "rights", they used to call them. In “Lavender Buzz” blackbirds sing, insects do what the track’s name says and there’s seemingly nothing else to care for, regardless of the urban souvenirs utilized by Wright, a memento of the inevitability of a confrontation with the actual world. “River Lea Time Lapse” introduces the serious droning, the kind of inward-looking humming of frequencies that resemble a low-key choir, gently embraced by additional parts imbued in tremolo and echo. Wonderful piece: a deadpan facade that nevertheless shines, its composed charm utterly splendid.

“London Is Drowning…” is slightly more anguishing, offering a mournful stasis as the soil in which the roots of an implicit pessimism are nourished by looping liquids and vague remembrances of a ringing timbre. The castle of resonance generated by this superimposition of sorrow and luminescence features a magnificent room of mirrors: feeling entirely misplaced becomes really easy, yet painlessness affirms itself after the initial melancholy. “…And I Live By The River” – an extension of the previous track (and a reference to Clash?) – sees the currents flow into a different, but still motionless tonality, the unmistakable gradations of recollection an inestimable aid in the battle against the inexplicability of certain internal commotions. “Kestrels” ends the movie in style, puncturing the heart with glowing beams and moaning lows, sealing the experience with a stamp of uncertainty characterized by a moderate conflict between the upper partials.

Despite the endless repeats and the unremitting analysis people may want to subject it to, An Angel Fell Where The Kestrels Hover is a rather unexplainable work, a statement open to thousands of diverse interpretations, mostly based on individual acuity. The generative methods and the inherent moods that brought to the creation of this umpteenth resplendent record are discussed by the composer on this interview with yours truly. Anyhow, words ring hollow when the sound is this profound, and this solitary man from New Zealand is definitely among the deepest artists around today.

Spekk

DRAPE – Dream Words

Ryan Gracey and Spencer Williams are Drape. Their work – as easily deduced from titles like “Cosmic Juices” and “Thin Air” – deals with slowed-down breathing, ethereal matters, blurred colours. In a word, what was once called “space music”. And, of course, it is mostly based on synthetic waves, celestial samples, repetitive ebb and flow and – needless to say - drones, pushing the sonority to occasionally well-affirmed consonance (“Goldenmouth”) and, in the finest examples, wrapping it with a blanket of unplumbed secrecy (“The Pillar And The Post”). So you’d expect your purple prose peddler to launch his customary tirade against the overpopulation of this sector of electronica. Not this time, no.

There’s something – and I still have to understand what exactly is – that makes me appreciate this record quite a bit. It is indeed a very serene release, well structured designs succeeding without anxiety, each detail in its correct place; and, for good measure, a degree of legitimate authenticity is perceived. Hints to pages from the Eno book, and also from the golden era of people such as Robert Rich and Steve Roach are not missing, yet you can almost touch the concentration and the genuine dedication with which Gracey and Williams painted the hues and chose the combinations in the studio. One detects the hours of labour behind Dream Words and – either you like the final result or not, and this writer does value the effort for the large part – this is already a valid reason for respecting the men who created it. Which, given the unproblematic access to this zone for practically everybody, equals a praiseworthy achievement. Honesty and acceptation of one’s limits will always be more precious than bogus saintliness shrouded by supposedly inscrutable, entirely mono-dimensional stasis.

Gears Of Sand

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS – The Place We Began

“…To return to the place we began and know it for the first time…” is both a quote from T.S. Eliot and the root of this enthralling offer by John Luther Adams. A couple of summers ago the composer found a number of boxes full of previously utilized reel-to-reel tapes, dating from the early 70s; he decided then of reassessing the material in order to create “new soundscapes from the fragment of my past”. You may assume a theory similar to that which brought William Basinski to the generation of the majestically regretful Disintegration Loops. Yet this record does not evoke anything analogous, in that these newly generated pieces – though containing echoes recalling something that’s achingly missing – present an alternance of nebulousness and more visible details (such as in “In The Rain”, characterized by partially intelligible field recordings) which, after opportune treatments and instrumental additions in the studio, delineate the music with a completely original morphology. The final results are dyed with the type of tonal paleness that - once connected with an emotional state - elicits dejection and faith at the same moment.

Neither Adams specifies the sources that were used, nor he lists the instruments chosen for their enhancement. All we’re left with is a sonically amorphous plan, its development largely articulated in successive aural sunsets and repeated chiaroscuro junctions achieved via a superior management of the frequency spectrum, making the most of the originator’s ability in fusing heart-piercingly subdued tones and spectacular subsonic activity. This generates an impressive display of different types of pseudo-stasis, in which fundamentally inert dynamics get nourishment from the inside, as it happens with the minor undercurrents that are distinctly felt between the toes even when bathing in the calmest waters. The gradations discerned in the title track and in the initial “In A Room” summon up ghosts of bowed vibraphones and rubbed glass, whereas in the masterpiece “At The Still Point” the speechlessness caused by a fantastic reiterative evanescence juxtaposed with other colours of this misleading palette (possibly including piano, but you’re never sure) compares this chapter’s inward-looking temperament to the finest pages of perceptive minimalism, the absence of recurring geometries notwithstanding.

A wonderfully understated album by an equally elusive artist, who leaves the essence of sound doing all the speaking. Like in the best dreams, which inevitably fail to materialize.

Cold Blue

DALE LLOYD – Akasha_For Record

After releasing music by a number of intriguing artists on his own And/OAR imprint, Dale Lloyd comes back as a composer with this limited edition on picture disc, and he does it with a vengeance. Hard as one tries, classifying this work is awfully problematical. Maybe these sounds were born to stimulate the less comforting sensations residing in our head and pierce a deceptive idea of protection through an uninterrupted generation of disbelief. These uncertainties involve both the utilized sources and ourselves, observed in the cosmically irrelevant role of discreditable entities that should remain speechless for ages before even trying to utter a word about what the awareness of a pure phenomenon really means.

In essence, Akasha_For Record is a series of sonic pictures whose incidence on the close environment’s resonance is sinisterly effective, and the equivalent can be told of its psychological consequence. Lloyd focuses on a restricted quantity of constituents to develop soundscapes that amplify the need of personal seclusion. The responsive listeners are going to face perplexing echoes and concrete-yet-mysterious compounds that may sound recognizable for a moment. Still, when they’ll try to detect the exact cause of an illusory fulfillment (or, more properly, of the subsequent distress), regret will be awaiting behind the corner. The nearly indistinguishable features of several of these infected vistas – halfway through metropolitan undertones and Thomas Köner’s exploration of forlornness – materialize for a while; afterwards, they either vanish completely or morph into some sort of ill-fated, unhealthy luminescence. A mere figment of the imagination, symbolizing the unfeasibility of determining what is the specific factor that, at the same juncture, cuddles solitude and scares like an ominously silent threat.

The contriver writes that the vinyl constitutes a primary component in the procedure, accumulating “dust, pops, crackles etcetera over time”. My copy doesn’t seem to cooperate in that sense, except perhaps for the incomparable needle-in-groove low rustle at the beginning and end of each side. But what I’m convinced of is that we are indeed dust, an insignificant graffiti waiting to be sandblasted off the existence's wall by the pressure of unconcern. This splendid album is a perfect reminder of the man’s miserable condition of deluded omadhaun, and an anticipation of the kind of acoustic intuition that will probably be met when, at long last, the process of human failure on this planet has reached its ultimate stage.

Elevator Bath