Coming in a DVD slim case adorned with Tate’s customary artwork made of black moons and virtually nonfigurative paintings, Reflections On A Ceiling is a three-part work that buttresses and substantiates all the characteristics of the Yorkshire artist we have felt affection for throughout the years, that fusion of frankness and volatility which causes an effect of unsystematic gratification in the mind of the listeners, subjected to sounds that are as intelligible as unforeseen.
The start is immediately surprising, as Tate is captured while answering a phone call amidst a layering of tangential field recordings, mainly belonging to the “noise from the town” variety: passing cars are pleasing to hear, provided that they remain at a good distance from our immediate surroundings. After that, the music increasingly shifts towards a preponderance of electric guitar and oscillators/electronics, the former played without any pretence of technical mastery, just abstract swipes and resounding dissonance, the latter generating a constant seesaw of frequencies that nevertheless stabilize the sonic development instead of altering its symmetries. The third subdivision dips the same phone call and initial ambiences in a viscous solution of effects, wobbly echoes of far-sighted candour once again reminding that the man is a one-and-only creative thinker, an unambiguous shape among many bad emulators of his style.
Fungal
