Electronic musicians have long used technology to peep
in other people’s lives, the most famous instance
being Scanner, who made a name for himself by intercepting
telephonic conversations with a scanner and using the
result of his sonic harvest to produce music. Boris
D Hegenbart’s approach on this record is slightly
more conventional, yet it derives of the same principle.
Built around conversations recorded in cafes, attics
and streets, Somethingmovinginsideplasticbox
is nothing less than a chronicle of life through auditory
snapshots.
Despite hailing from Berlin, Hegenbart shows a rather
profound interest for Japan. His first self-released
album, Hikuioto, published under the enigmatic
[#/Tau] moniker back in 1997, established a relation
between German and Japanese cultures through intricate
sound processing as conversations in Japanese and English
were dissected and reassembled to create a patchwork
of micro structures intrically woven together. Although
he follows a similar process here, his attempt at giving
some purpose to these crumbs of spoken words and found
sounds turns this project into a strangely fascinating
abstract story telling. Hegenbart never get clause to
produce anything melodic here, but the purpose of this
record lies somewhere else. Documenting life through
a microphone, then extracting elements captured to process
them or not, and assemble them, completely obliterating
contexts. Perhaps the easier track to piece together,
Rosin seems as almost untouched, yet repeated
sections give the game away. Ginger, which
follows, is more complex, and for a moment, it appears
that some actual musical form might be about to break
through at any time. Crockl or SMIP
follow a similar pattern, but what could sound frustrating
at first becomes extremely playful and dense, giving
substance to the whole album. Minimalist to the extreme,
Somethingmoving… teases the mind and
calls on perceptions in the way contemporary art installations
do. Remaining completely objective with his sounds,
Hegenbart unearths microscopic details of everyday life
and magnify them for the listener to contemplate. If
it is impossible to re-contextualise these sonic shards,
it is actually surprisingly easy to imagine meanings
and give your own interpretations of these tracks. Although
it could seem more appropriate to listen to it on headphones,
this album takes a whole new dimension when coming out
of speakers, suddenly turning empty rooms into crowded
places.
Although the process adopted by Boris D Hegenbart is
far from being revolutionary, his approach challenges
conceptions of musical forms and give an interesting
concrete dimension to abstract collages. In just under
an hour, these reconstituted tales reflect on the fast-paced
modern city life and provides a compelling vision of
our world.
3.9/5 |
