CD_Slopper – SaskieWoxi 3.8

                A duo of Florian Hecker and Oswald Berthold (from Farmers Manual) come together to create a rather strange album. Consisting entirely of jagged pieces of digital garbage and noise, it completely confounds the listener’s expectations of what sound should do. Some parts of this get extremely loud, and conjecture up images of an extremely unstable molecule. Unfortunately, the lack of coherence or a unifying theme besides random chance makes it hard to enjoy or digest.

                By no means are Hecker or Berthold strangers to an unorthodox approach to music. Usually though their experiments, as obtuse as they can be, do generally have a purpose. With this, it appears pure chance music. While that gives it a certain appeal, it lacks the sort of rigor Hecker puts into his project or what Berthold adds to Farmers Manual.

                Instead, you’re presented with 44 tracks of digital debris. Combining this with another, more unifying theme, like what Mark Fell gave to his “Ten Types of Elsewhere” might have helped in making this more approachable, enjoyable, and interesting. Even putting various similar sounds or suites might have helped in making this a better album.

                Pieces and moments exist on here which point to greater things, but they are never elaborated upon. Instead, you’re even a giant stream of data incoherently presented. That’s unfortunate, as usually these two artists have much to say.

Mark Fell – Ten Types of Elsewhere 7.7

Mark Fell is a pretty accomplished interdisciplinary artist. Besides being one half of “SND” he also does live performances of both sound and vision. This particular release “Ten Types of Elsewhere” deals with his installation work. Despite the disparate nature of the works, it does have its own unifying theme.

44 tracks might seem like a lot to wade through, but really it is more like 9 tracks, since some of these come together like suites. Rhythm is important on here, though there’s none of trademark SND beats. Beats do pop up occasionally, most notably in the “Storage” and “Ideation” groupings. In fact, each one of those suites seems to have heavily influenced parts of SND’s more recent output.

A lot of the track offer glitch treatments and various scraped guitar sounds. Since so much of it feels cyclical, there’s a certain Zen feeling that is achieved, particularly in the more ambient works. L-NE definitely changed its rules around for a bit for this releases, since a lot of the sounds on here are quite loud, so mind your volume controls, as the bursts are almost at random.

Experimentation is in full force throughout the disc. Towards the end though, that experimental edge is given a soul. Using panning to full effect, the music begins a gentle playfulness, removing all previous harsher edges. “Remote Systems” begins this process, popping from right to left, left to right. 

“Commuting” ends things on a high note. This is one of Mark’s most tender tracks. A soothing ebb and flow of a track drifts along as you float with it. Listen to this one on very, very good headphones. Going on in the background of the ebbs are additional echoes of what you’re hearing. Usually such large scale acoustic experiments are purely academic, but this one feels pure, feels genuine.

I really liked this.