JOHN HUDAK / JASON KAHN / BRUCE TOVSKY
For The Time Being
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The “drone- and texture-focused track, recorded at Diapason Gallery, New York” by Hudak and Kahn, consists mainly of “field recordings … from Dobbs Ferry….” according to The Brain. “While changing slightly over its twenty-minute running time, this first piece fluctuates with minute strokes, brushing ever so softly on tiny changes and developments. Themes emerge then reemerge at steady intervals through a soft haze which blankets the rest of the oscillating cycle…. High, smooth, piercing drones inhabit this performance with light and airy shuffles slowly broadening as the loops multiply. The textures gradually come to the forefront from its muted beginnings to an exhilarating density. The second piece is more upfront, with Hudak slightly plucking a guitar subtly contrasted with the processed playing of Tovsky…, an evolving universe of sound and morphing microcosmic shapes.”
Analogues
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“Atmosphere, depth, a sense of direction, and the exploration of sound” is how Sound Projector sums it up, with “repetition and a minimalist approach [providing] structure and direction…. [S]amples of radio and field recordings, and of drums and metal objects … create moody and sometimes ominous [atmospheres].”
Drums And Metals
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“The six compositions on drums and metals are, Feldman-fashion, named after the instruments employed on each track,” notes Avant Reviews. “ ‘Snare Drum + Bell’ features a bell, hieratically tolled, and as each toll decays there’s a rustle of activity on the snare drum. The articulation of the snare is indistinct; it sounds like someone panning for gold, or perhaps a distantly recorded rain stick. Progressively, as the snare gets louder, it is joined by a buzzing screech as a resonator is touched lightly to the surface of the bell. The snare-work gradually reduces in volume, and when it becomes barely distinguishable the track ends…. Minimalism … has obviously had an impact…. Kahn makes sparing use of phase-shifts, and throughout the CD emphasis is placed on repetitive rhythmic patterns, especially pulses and waves. Kahn doesn’t foreground human agency, how a sound has been made; he focuses attention on sound itself, its timbral qualities, its duration, its relationship to other sounds and their placement in space.”
Plurabelle
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“Kahn works with loops and waves of sound, most of which are generated from percussion (metalophones in particular — he likes harmonics) and treated electronically,” notes Avant. “He constantly modulates his sounds; nothing is allowed simply to be; it always has to be becoming, albeit at a slow and steady rate. These pieces are attractive and engaging, without in any way emulating the sugar-spun electronica those descriptors would imply.”
Header_Change
(Cut) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A harsh, brute and sometimes aggressive brick wall of drilling frequencies,” says Tokafi, “an attack of edgy drones drenched in distortion only occasionally pierced by flanger-effects or scraping noises, a world with a monochromatic palette” by the former Voice Crack noise guru manipulating the digital source code of video stills by Swiss media artist Silvie Defraoui.
Select Dialect
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Neutered percolations search for toeholds as they ascend cliffs toward absolute oxygen deprivation. Elastic pika bubbles swell and deflate, creating a terrain like a diagonal pachinko machine heated by sulfur. The first elevator in Europe arrives in the marble-floored lobby of a palatial hotel as toastmasters from every banquet ever held saunter out of the past to drink once again to the health of ostriches with steel drum skulls.
Repeat
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“Layers of metal-on-metal percussion,” The Wire informs us, “Chugging tape loops, real drums and scrawny, bodiless guitar in a series of semi-improvised sound snatches…, organize[d] into hypnotic yet resolute rock blasts.”
