VARIOUS ARTISTS
2 | Favourite Places
AB026
Audiobulb Records 2009
10 Tracks. 56mins30secs

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The concept is pretty simple: take a number of contemporary musicians with a taste for moods and atmospheres, task them with recording sounds from their favourite places in the world and use them in a composition. This is exactly what David Newman, head of Audiobulb, did two years ago, and the result was compiled in the first instalment of Favourite Places, with contributions from Biosphere, Taylor Deupree, Claudio, Leafcutter John and John Kannenberg amongst others. The second volume in the collection brings together musicians from the UK (Michael Santos, Icarus, Autistici, Calika), Australia (Lawrence English), Belgium (Yannick Franck), Japan (Sawako), USA (Jeremy Bible, He Can Jog) and Canada (Michael Trommer), giving them each a chance to introduce their very own favourite place. The booklet accompanying this CD contains photographs and a description of these spots, providing concrete complements to the recordings. Continue Reading »

AUTISTICI
Complex Tone Test
KESH12
Keshhhhhh Recordings 2009
09 Tracks. 48mins37secs

Boomkat: CD

Autistici is the solo project of Sheffield-based David Newman, who also runs the excellent Audiobulb imprint. His first major release, Volume Objects, appeared on Taylor Deupree’s 12K last year, but, prior to this, Newman had released a handful of EPs on small labels, and his music had also been featured on a number of compilations. On his debut album, Newman crafted his soundscapes, built from both treated acoustic sound sources and purely electronic components, with delicate impressionist touches, weaving them into beautiful evocative pieces.

With Complex Tone Test, released on Cambridge-based Keshhhhhh Recordings, Newman manipulates electro-acoustic textures once again, weaving them into vast ethereal formations which often appear pretty static and monolithic, yet constantly morph and evolve, their course altered ever so slightly over their lifespan. Continue Reading »

AUTISTICI
Volume Objects
12k1045
12K 2008
09 Tracks. 44mins05secs

Autistici gives over his first full-length to the object – to its ruses and to its allure. It’s something evident in both the album and the photographs that accompany it. Shots of metallic wires and their sharp calm; woodboards and their comforting simplicity; even a granular wall, wrinkled like an aged face, betrays a mystery that cannot be exhumed. Never in any of this is there a subject to be found.

In the album, too, pieces aren’t driven by a compositional (subjective) sense. Autistici is concerned with tracing the line of sound itself, with letting it develop, fleshing it out by (re)approaching it time and again from weirdly skewed studio perspectives. Continue Reading »