Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Posted: 13 Mar 2009 01:49 PM PDT

aix

Aix steers Giuseppe Ielasi well away from the refulgent romanticism he’s courted on past works. Ielasi no longer manipulates harmonic, timbral, and dynamic parameters with equal emphasis. Instead, he focusses on the material craftsmanship behind his lithe assemblages of micro-samples, percussion, and synthetic textures. The appeal of the disc is found in its tendency to find the poetic not in the ephemeral or indistinct, but the inert and everyday furniture of today’s carping cityscape’s. Ielasi utilizes elastic springs, zippers, winking bells and other miscellaneous objects one might find strewn across construction sites such as the one depicted on the albums cover.

From these disparate sound sources, Ielasi weaves dense, surprisingly intricate, real-time sound collages that pull off the trick of inviting serious investigation while constantly teetering on the brink of instability. Ielasi handles the material with a strong, consistent sensibility, which enables these brief vignettes to retain a cool ease. As he shifts lightly from pieces of jittery disposition and fragile details, to toy-box charms, and close-up gurgles and bony kneed thumps that instinctively unwind like a kind of strange epiglottal sound poetry, all lined with the odd ripple or splash of melody, he maintains a continuous flow without faking up dramatic intensity. On headphones, it becomes a particularly engrossing, warm, even sensuous, sonic tableau.

Max Schaefer

Ysanne Spevack & Phillip Clemo - Soundzero (Soundzero)

Posted: 13 Mar 2009 01:01 PM PDT

Ysanne Spevack's talents on the violin are of a singular nature in regards to the reimagining of the soundscape of the instrument, it tears, wails and sings outside the confines of its 16th century and ancient roots. Phillip Clemo is the multi-talent arranger, mixer, atmospheric landscaper of sound. There are a plethora of well noted musicians who form the band on this 1999 studio piece whose sonic tapestry is a well woven affair. It presents as a jam session but its disguise is thin and incapable of disguising the artifice of the mixing and production dedication of Clemo.

To a great degree it is a musician's album, for there are few access point for popular appreciation here, and the sheer virtuosity displayed by the players here is something of a rare and somewhat hidden quality in general life. Soundzero at times displays all the sound stories populating its world at the time, ambient sensibility, world music vocal and instrument sensibility, classical rigor and discrete variation, jazz influenced free form construction especially amongst the percussion and drums. As a sound event it scales the heights of what a psychedelic ambient album amounted to in the time period of its original release, yet rarely did. It holds to none of the clichés of the genre and mixes instruments, phrasing, intonation, technique, and technology with a light deftness not displayed by the banner wielder.

Innerversitysound

Ethan Rose - Oaks (Baskaru) / Francisco Lopez & Lawrence English - HB (Baskaru)

Posted: 13 Mar 2009 09:07 AM PDT

oaks

The recent barrage from Baskaru begins with the second fully-fledged effort from Ethan Rose, who thoroughly explores the network of pipes of a 1926 Wurlitzer Theater Organ. While Rose subjects the pipes to his computer and electronic processing, for the most part the emphasis remains firmly on musicality rather than material craftsmanship or sonic novelty. Structures in sound are what count for Rose, and he is careful to never overwhelm a track to kitschy effect. At times the music is weightless and pretty like a music box; at other points it has the more substantial presence of a sounding sculpture. He makes steady and relentless progress, moving with some ease between these two poles, naive tinkering turning into layering obsession and vice versa. In fact, the entire album comes across as a testimony to Rose’s personal obsession with his instrument of choice, and the album is favorably effected as a result.

From a different sphere, sound practitioners Francisco Lopez and Lawrence English each capture a sound event for this work and allow the other to process it as they will. Generally something of an appropriationist whizzkid, Lopez actually plays it somewhat light on “Untitled 175″, allowing the bird chirps and insectile rustling to sink into and rise effortlessly out of the soft buzzes and distant echoes of the piece. For his two works, English has minimal openings pass through a layering process, gathering in density and intensity, often with physical alterations of volume, before cutting back to bare bones and intricate micro-sound gestures. On headphones, it is a wholly involving and pleasurable listen. But one expects more from artists of their ilk, as the collaboration hardly bucks expectation and has little of the event about it.

Max Schaefer