Landschaft - Karelia Karelia is an album composed of two parts, the title track itself, and a second companion piece, Narocz. Karelia is a drone-based journey. A slowly ebbing, slightly foreboding but yet compellingly inviting tone undulates as if an audible representation of a gravity wave. This tone is constructed from deep, yet empty space, and is the medium which supports the further activities unfolding within this framework. Cold strands of channeled harmonic threads are piped out into this vacuum, ringing out as if the remnants of signals broadcasted from a long extinct source. The sound is magnitudinally empty, as all good universes should be, and gives the distinct impression of incomprehensible cosmic distances. My mind references side one of Eno's Apollo (for those of us with vinyl copies...), but then Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey comes along and just kicks that out... This is edgy work, slightly scary, stringing me along by my own curious intrigue, leading my imagination across the blackness because I need to know whats out there. Play this in your own comfortable darkness. Narocz is perhaps the sound of arrival. Here the drones are replaced by softly shimmering metallic cascades, supported by waves from a warm glossy sheened wind. It's an auditory lifeform, and the seductive sound that it emits begins to draw me further into its belly. I'm slowly being swallowed into a swamp of alien chatter, enveloped, assimilated, perhaps digested, but with full consent. It feels too good to try and back out.
Landschaft - Indistinct Borders Landschaft points out that this album was inspired by "recollections of the lost and waning cultures of central and northern Europe, and by a collection of pre-WWII contemporary photographic travelogues". This synopses serves as an open introduction to the themes presented in this work, and a description which is open to the interpretation of imagined places. Indeed, it it a sense of place which strikes me as the most powerful aspect of this record. On his website Landschaft makes a descriptive musical analogy citing Eric Satie as an influence, however, I would beg to differ, as the closest influence to my ears would be Hans-Joachim Roedelius of Cluster. This comparison merely serves to illustrate a stylistic similarity, because in my mind Landschaft achieves something quite uniquely his own with this recording. When Cluster collaborated with Brian Eno back in the late seventies they produced two albums which for me defined the idea that music could evoke 'other worlds'. The microphone pointing at the lonely twilight sky on the cover of 'Cluster & Eno' was a visually enticing graphic illustrating this idea perfectly. However, this invocation remained entirely cerebral, and somewhat aloof. In comparison, what Landschaft brings to the table with 'Indistinct Borders' is not only a sense of musical intellectualism (which always strongly appeals), but also an umbilical connection to landscapes and places which, since listening carefully to this work, have begun to manifest in my mind. As far as I know, I have never physically visited these places, but they are deeply rich in color, form and texture, and they pervade my imagination like dreams. Here the albums concept falls beautifully into place. The artists description of his intention becomes vividly illustrated by the music. Of course the interpretation is subjective, but nevertheless a world is forming. It is sometimes said that a landscape or location has a memory, and can hold within it a record of events that took place there through history. 'Indistinct Borders' seems to evoke the sense of melancholy which permeates these imagined places. The sound palette throughout is delicate and contained. The opening track, 'Frozen' sounds like a descent to earth through cold space, with layered synthesizers merging with what sound like treated oboes. From there on, and through the subsequent pieces, a minimal, metered piano is introduced, providing the wistful melodic themes which reoccur throughout the album, and which guide the sense of place. What sounds like a Farista organ borrowed from Connie Planks studio takes the lead on 'Tone Chimes Sink Slowly to the Lake Floor', while the following track 'Static' takes pleasure in the interplay of said piano motifs and acoustic guitar, and is strikingly lovely. 'A Demolished City Where Wildflowers Silently Grow' strips down the format even further. Electronically treated violas are pulled shimmeringly taught across time and sound as if they could disappear within an instant. The mood becomes startlingly desperate, only to be awakened into familiarity again by the warm piano tones of 'The Joining' - the juxtaposition of these two very different pieces making the latters 2 minutes and 24 seconds seem like an indefinite period of sunshine. Beautifully realized. The album ends with 'Frozen (Return)' which brings a strong impression of completion. Now the sense of being drawn away again from the ground, from the earth, leaving this diary of visitations behind, and returning to the starting point of this remote viewing is gently enforced. 'Indistinct Borders' is morphic resonance in musical form. Meditate on that, today... |
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Kymatik - Dur-as-sulh The name 'Kymatik' is derived from the Greek word 'Kyma', meaning 'a great wave', and was used by Swiss physicist Hans Jenny as a descriptive term for the effects he saw using amplified tones to manipulate/create patterns in fluids and powders. More recently Jenny's research has led him to use these findings in a clinical environment for both therapy and healing. These ideas and the use of ambisonic surround sound equipment are the underlying influences on this CD. On this CD there are both environmental recordings as well as compositions that make use of UHJ encoding to enable ambisonic playback. Of the compositions; the musical styles range from the use of dense rhythmic patterns to subtle shimmerings and a pure tone piece that sounds like nothing I've heard before. The short environmental recordings are spaced between the compositions and offer some light relief from the intensity of these works. One thing all the pieces have in common a strong psychoacoustic effect which can be further enhanced for those fortunate enough to have access to a UHJ decoder.
Review quoted from OPPROBRIUM What could initially have been another addition to the legions of blip-bleep 'progressive techno' pabulum of the new century (note warning signs: gorgeous hi-tech digi-pak compu-graphics, ubiquitous '@' symbol in every fucking line of lengthy credits for 'Audio Hardware/Software') actually reveals itself to be one of the most conceptually and aurally intriguing excursions into sound-as-headspace altering energy since The Hafler Trio first recorded their own lower colons (or whatever) in the early '80s. Like these worthy compatriots, the enigmatic Kymatik (best lead to date: surname McNaughton) has dedicated a significant amount of time exploring the uses and effects of surround sound ('ambisonics' to you, chum). From the short field recordings (bees, crickets, a trawler leaving harbour) viewed as minimal audio soundscape, to the full-on concept-over-aesthetic approach of 'Excerpt From Kandinsky's 'Im Blau'รข (yes, a tonal transposition of the painted surface electronically expressing the visual & tactile as a curiously undynamic tone-waver), Dar-As-Sulh Volume I provides an at times intense, often stimulating range of experiences. 'Dentists For Mice' is probably the most immediately accessible, creating a dense loop & cut-up guided tour of the landscape after the bomb's dropped in Negativland. Later, a wonderful collaboration with Mark Tamea, 'Tisedni', processes the sound of a spin-drier into the kind of music you always thought 'techno' should sound like. Finally, the remarkable and punishingly affecting 23-minute 'Lorenz Attractor': a mind-reaming drone-tone which threads and dances its way through the inner ear in such a way as to create a vertiginous and disorienting audio-drug effect. When the sound abruptly ceases, the listener's head chimes with the neural harmonics of echoic memory. According to supporting material, the word 'kymatik' is derived from the Greek 'kyma', meaning 'a great wave', and was first coined by Swiss physicist Hans Jenny as a descriptive term for the effects he noted using amplified tones to manipulate and create patterns in fluids and powders. By applying a similar methodology, Kymatik attempts to do the same to your brain matter. The fact that stereophonic reproduction can only give an approximation of the full ambisonic range of these recordings makes the whole thing even more intriguing. File along with the likes of Battery Operated and Morphogenesis as UK sound artists of the highest echelon. (Tim Cornelius) Further information and more reviews. |
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