23five

G*Park

Sub

23five

***MARC ZEIER’s first major album since the cryptic electro-acoustic Reuters (Tochnit Aleph 2008) is a sprawling masterpiece of modern day musique concrete, reflecting the early pioneers’ use of razor cut tape with a grandiose revelation of an existential horror. Zeier describes is as a manifestation of amorphous conditions that lead to (or interfere with) representational forms or states of being. For every malignant drone and turgid thrum, Zeier punctures fluttering, frozen methane surfaces with jagged incisions, pneumatic hammerings, and decompressed gasps. This fragmented punctuation is a signature to the G*PARK aesthetic, used effectively in mapping clinical situations turned septic. The exact nature of the sound object is informed more by a shadowy deconstruction than by a direct representation, thrust into an absurd existence as an abomination, a violation, a monster.

Garet, Richard

Areal

23five

***RICHARD GARET has employed photosensors to control a particular audio signal through the erratic nature of a violently pulsing abstract film; he has also flooded a performance space with fog to disperse multi-channel video work into an ephemeral yet sculptural mass, accompanied by an equally diffused sound design. His ongoing research in interference continues here with electromagnetic disturbances through radio: the process of transmission and reception is treated as a routing system for the audio signal, while the nodes that direct the course of that signal are deliberately agitated and distressed. For example, an electrical motor might be situated near a radio's antenna, disrupting its ability to properly receive a transmission. Through the controlled use of electro-acoustic techniques (some rough and volatile, some refined and delicate), he organizes the signal distortion, the crackling static, and the ever-present tendencies for feedback into swarms of chiming resonance, electrically sourced harmonics, tactile bricolage, and impressionist din.

Kahn, Jason

Vanishing Point

23five

***The American sound-artist JASON KAHN is an exacting technician when it comes to the principles of noise. However, his application of noise in composition is not that of Merzbow or Masonna, with teeth-gnashing explosions of distortion, feedback, and volume; rather, Kahn's psychoacoustic techniques employ the specific frequencies of white, pink, brown, and blue noise in works that reflect the ideals of minimalism. These are sounds that regularly occur through the constant vibration of machinery; and Kahn is more than happy to appropriate such events through field recording. He also generates complementary noises through systems that involve the rattling architecture of a drum kit and an analog synthesizer. For all of the phenomenological studies and stoic mesmerism attributed to much of Kahn's catalogue, Vanishing Point is a subtle and hypnotic elegy for rattling metals, timbral vibration, gossamer static, hissing field recordings, and those aforementioned colored noises.

Murray, Brendan

Commonwealth

23five

***AVAILABLE AGAIN!!! A central figure in Boston's sound art vanguard, Brendan Murray specifically shapes his repetitions and sinewy tonalities within the rigors of compositional frameworks and temporal restraints, setting himself apart from the conventional wisdom that drone-based music is an open-ended exercise into the "realm of the infinite." A single crescendo terminating at the end of forty-nine minutes, this epic investigates subtle harmonics and overtones expressed through layered slippages of pure sound conceived through guitar, analog synthesis, and plenty of digital manipulation. A worthy parallel to the work of Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Iannis Xenakis.

Catlin, Tim

Radio Ghosts

23five

***The name TIM CATLIN may not be terribly well known amongst the avant-guitarist circles; but his recorded output clearly stands amongst the best that Glenn Branca, Keith Rowe, and Jim O'Rourke have mustered from their six strings hard wired into the histories of electroacoustics, minimalism, and post-punk experimentation. Based out of Melbourne, Catlin is a guitarist who incessantly tinkers with the mechanics of his instrument, envisioning it as alternately as a mimetic sculptural object and a pure sound generator. Through his experiments with alternative tunings, atypical string gauges, and Rube Goldberg contraptions of interconnected motors, speakers, and radios, he seeks out the rasping textures of strings vibrating against each other, the acoustic phase patterns of two microtonally tuned strings, and the electrical purity of circuits feeding back upon themselves, essentially creating a polyglot drone symphony cast in smoldering monochrome.

Coelacanth

Glass Sponge

23five

***The textural flutters, squeaks, and mobile scrabblings of LOREN CHASSE (JEWELLED ANTLER COLLECTIVE, THUJA) and corrosion aficionado JIM HAYNES bring minimalism back from the dead. Bell tones, ghostly feedback, and tuning fork resonations all spiral together into translucent drones.