Thursday, August 6, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

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Hybernation – Greyhound Park (Rednetic)

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 06:46 AM PDT

As Hybernation, UK-based electronic producer Stuart Bowditch has already established a reputation for building his ambient / downbeat-oriented productions around found sounds and field recordings – an approach vividly showcased on his impressive 2007 debut album for Rednetic ‘Snow Cover.’ Two years on, this debut volume in Rednetic’s strictly limited run 3" CDR ambient series sees him working completely with field recordings, with this single 18 minute long track ‘Greyhound Park’ taking its title from a now-dilapidated shopping park that Stuart often glimpsed from his parents’ car as a child during the eighties, but never actually visited. Ostensibly, the audio contents here document a trip to the local shops – from the walk in through the car park, through to the metallic crash of trolleys being slotted into place, the yelling of excited children and even the occasionally entrance of stray, foreign-accented chatter (though it’s never really clear whether the voice in question emanates from the shopkeeper or his customers). Apart from the appearance of icy, minimalist IDM arrangements towards the very end of the track, Bowditch’s also elected to keep much of the original audio here more or less untreated, leaving plenty of ambiguous space for the listener to conjure up their own inner visuals. One of the most unexpectedly delightful ambient treats I’ve heard for quite a while…but remember there’s only a scant 100 copies around.

Groupshow – The Martyrdom of groupshow (~scape/Inertia)

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 05:22 AM PDT

Comprised of Jan Jelinek (Farben), Hanno Leichtmann (Static, The Vulva String Quartet) and Andrew Pekler (Sad Rockets), three of the ~scape label’s esteemed old guard, Groupshow’s debut album ‘The Martyrdom of Groupshow’ offers less than the sum of its parts. They initially surfaced in 2005 as the band built to perform Jelinek’s ‘Kosmischer Pitch’ live, and the kosmische references remain, particularly a near-obsessive devotion to analogue synth sounds. The album is edited down from some ‘200 Gigabytes of improvised jam sessions’, but beyond that any obvious reference to digital sound processing is absent; instead we hear a collection of warm fuzz, bleeps and warbles, egged on by jazzy percussive rattlings on drums, cymbals and objects.

The sound then is closer to neo-Krautrockers Mouse on Mars and Kreidler than solo Jelinek, Leichtmann or Pekler, with strict loops rarely making an appearance. Instead they build repetition from scratch, constantly modulating these globules with frequent twists of dusty old dials. With titles like ‘The Future Looks Bright… Super Bright’ the retro-futurist tones and uneasy lounge arrangements seem obvious, like Curd Duca meeting Morton Subotnik, as for ‘Incredibly Comfortable Slippers’ where vintage blips morph from water drips into marimba melodies while hazy cymbals splash away in the background. Yet for all their nostalgia Groupshow seldom descend into kitsch, which is perhaps what they need. These remain experimental pieces, hardly a martini soundtrack but not entirely satisfactory as involved listening either.

Joshua Meggitt

at 5:41 PM