AUTISTICI
Amplified Presence
HOMEN029
Home Normal 2011
10 Tracks. 51mins47secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD

Following releases on 12K, Keshhhhhh Recordings and his own Audiobulb imprint, David Newman has settled down at Home Normal for his third album proper. Right from Volume Objects, released over three years ago, Newman has worked at creating incredibly detailed miniature soundscapes from field recordings and electronics, and, while the Detached Metal Voice and Slow Temperature collections of early material released last year showcased quite a different side of his work, this is once again the feature of Amplified Presence.

Over the course of this album, Newman expands quite drastically on the concept he developed on both Volume Object and Complex Tone Test by refining it much further. He has a knack for creating extremely detailed and intricate soundscapes and making them sound so extremely effortless and effective, simply by wrapping them in beautifully crafted little melodies, and he does so with brio here. Whether it is with the gentle atmospheric tones of Automated Night Light, the bleep-heavy Attachment Type or the harder edge of Tower Location, melodies are at the heart of his compositions, and binds them together. But it is ultimately with sound that he is most at ease. While deeply electronic, there is something quite pastoral and organic about this whole album, in part thanks to the way he processes acoustic sounds and field recordings into his compositions and incorporating them into his sonic palette by maintaining most of their natural aspect, yet often using them in unusual ways.

Newman creates here a fascinating world built around dreamy soundscapes, some so utterly delicate and fragile that they threaten to shatter at the tiniest sparks of density (Automated Night Light, A Bed Of Powdered Glass, Field13), other sturdier (Sixteenth, Slow Rotor Sensory Loop) and more playful (A Religion Of Water And Air, Attachment Type, Tower Location). Each piece is like a self-contained universe, with its own set of climates, sonic spaces and tones, sometimes deployed into a succession of tiny vignettes which, although appearing to work independently from each other, are in fact intricately linked. This is perhaps most obvious on A Religion Of Water And Air or Tower Location, where their respective various sections are clearly distinct, but this is found elsewhere on the record albeit in much more subtle forms.

Amplified Presence has however a very strong sonic identity of its own, and one that is very consistent throughout. This has alway been one of Newman’s strength with his records, yet it feels as this is taken to an entirely new level here. If Newman calls upon a vast sound palette for this album, he is careful to retain an overall feel for the entire album. As a result, this is undoubtedly his most accomplished and impressive record to date, and definitely one not to miss.

4.8/5

Autistici | Autistici (MySpace) | Home Normal
Amazon UK: CD US: CD

AUTISTICI
Slow Temperature – Early Works Vol. 2
AB030
Audiobulb Records 2010
11 Tracks. 51mins44secs

AUTISTICI
Autistici Reworked – Resonating Wires
AB032
Audiobulb Records 2010
10 Tracks. 55mins23secs

Slow Temperature – Early Works Vol. 2
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

The last year has proved a rather busy period for Autistici, with no less than four releases between October last year and now, two of which collecting material recorded between 2001 and 2005 and previously unreleased, the other two part of a same project, the original, Complex Tone Test, being Autistici’s second album, the follow up to his 2008 12K debut Volume Object, and Resonating Wires, focussing on reworkings of one particular track from that album.

While Detached Metal Voice was a somewhat diverse collection, ranging from the relatively straightforward to the more overtly experimental, Slow Temperature, the second instalment of early material is an altogether much more coherent release and is in essence much closer to Newman’s two albums proper in the approach to textures and how they fit in together.

Built primarily from sounds sourced from everyday objects and ambient noises, the tracks collected on Slow Temperature documents how Newman progressively refined his sound by focusing on the subtle details of his source components, and found a voice of his own. This is particularly evident on pieces such as Soft Grey Generator, Stone Steps Into Water, Projections From A Prayer or Carved From Lips, as he arranges tiny sonic particles into complex abstract structures. By combining environmental sounds and noises with stark electronics and effects, Newman creates fascinating little worlds, each perfectly self-contained, which, despite sporadic familiar flavours, appear totally alien and, at times, quite hostile. These can take on extremely minimal appearances, as on Projections From Prayer for instance, which consists, for the most part, of very little more than a few layered metallic sounds, or Workshop For Ambitious Dreamers, with its short outbursts of electronics propelled into fragments of melody. At others, the soundscapes are far denser and richer, and have a propensity to change, sometimes quite radically, a number of times during the course of a piece, as is the case with Farm, which starts with clusters of noises and glitches, but soon evolves into a much more sombre drone, criss-crossed with statics, what sounds at times like a bumblebee, and at others, like a much more undefined hum, and, at one point, quite curiously, a duck.

Resonating Wires is a very different piece of work, and one which stems from one of the driving ideas behind Audiobulb, that of having a very diverse set of people work on a single project. All the tracks from this record are based on Resonating Wires, originally featured on Complex Tone Test, which was based on the sound made by the vibrating wire from an electric guitar which was processed and layered with other sounds. Taking this idea further, Newman asked ten artists, all evolving within an electronic or experimental field, to give their own interpretation of the piece. The result is, expectedly, very diverse, yet these tracks are made to work as an album in itself rather than a simple collection of remixes, and actually manage that pretty well. Although the interpretations differ greatly, from the microscopic sound and glitch placement of the Simon Scott or Francisco López versions to the autumnal overtones of reworkings by Jimmy Behan or Ian Hawgood & Danny Norbury or the more straightforward approach adopted by Sawako or He Can Jog, both going for a smooth and ethereal form of dreamy electronica close in essence to pop music, or by ISAN who have created a magical sound world, at times evocative of a box full of broken toys, for their typically melancholic version.

Each one of the tracks presented here is totally immersive and takes on some of the qualities of the original to mould them into something so unique that it is difficult to believe that these artists worked from the same set of recordings. Yet, there is something strangely consistent which binds these tracks together as part of a coherent whole, whether they are beautiful melodic pieces or more experimental revisions. What transpires is the fine processing work adopted by Newman on his original, and how malleable it is in the hands of his remixers. In fact, the very notion of remix doesn’t quite apply here, as each of the ten acts involved offer here a personal interpretation of Newman’s sound pool rather than simply rearrange his original composition.

These two releases, focusing on vastly different ideas and points in David Newman’s career, still appear very much linked to each other as they expose his thought process with music and sound and the way he has come to work with them. That both records, while made up of very diversified components, end up sounding like coherent works is a credit to his overall vision and his deep knowledge and understanding of his collaborators.

Slow Temperature: 4.6/5 Resonating Wires: 4.5/5

Autistici | Autistici (MySpace) | Audiobulb Records
Slow Temperature – Early Works Vol. 2
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

:PAPERCUTZ
Do Outro Lado Do Espelho (Lylac Ambient Reworks)
AB029
Audiobulb Records 2010
12 Tracks. 57mins53secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: DLD

Originally the project of Porto-based musician Bruno Miguel Pereira Pinto, :Papercutz soon expanded to incorporate vocalist Melissa Veras, with other musicians joining the pair for live performances. Released two years ago on Canadian imprint Apegenine, Lylac, the band’s first album, bridged the gap between stark atmospheric electronica and elegant contemporary pop music to create a superb hybrid, served by Pinto’s delicate blend of acoustic instrumentation, electronic textures and beats on one side, and by Veras’s softly ethereal vocal tones, occasionally reminiscent of Anneli Drecker, on the other. The album was followed by a single, Ultravioleta, which featured remixes by The Sight Below, Neotropic, Spandex and Signer. This is partly what encouraged Pinto to let other musicians give their own vision of his work. The resulting collection of remixes, published on Audiobulb, features reworks by Helios, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, He Can Jog, Autistici, Astroboy, Chris Bissonnette, Jasper TX,  Rameses III, Emanuele Errante and Feu Follet.

Expectedly, the tone is somewhat subdued and, occasionally on the verge of reflective here, but, despite involving artists from very different horizons, this album is extremely consistent all the way through, and actually sits comfortably next to Lylac by complementing it rather well. Indeed, while each artist interprets a given song in their own way, bringing their own universe into that of :Papercutz, they all do so very respectfully of the original work by retaining much of the layered aspect of songs. These are however for the most part radical reworkings, which see soundscapes developed into lush new ambient forms or retract into spacious drones, while the voice is in turn wrapped in textures and treated as just another sound source, or isolated as primary organic element to increase its impact.

On The Gift Of Self, Simon Scott focuses on expanding just a fraction of guitar tones into a rising drone around which circles distant voices, while Taylor Deupree turns the somewhat stripped down Do Outro Lado Do Espelho into a rich and vivid soundtrack above which Veras’s voice appears as in suspension. He Can Jog brings things back down to earth for a moment with a stabbing distorted electric guitar on A Way To Emerge, but soon the tone softens again and allows for another dreamy space to develop, away from the marimbas and percussions of the original. Perhaps the most striking remixes are found toward the end, first with the breathy Astroboy version of Lost Boys, which retains the rhythmic pattern of the Lylac version, but dips it into a much hazier sound setting, while he pushes the voice slightly deeper in the mix, then with Jasper TX’s magical take on Broken Treasure. Building on a single looped chord progression by slowly adding delicate piano lines, then burying them under layers of sound, Dag Rosenqvist delivers here a truly magnificent version.

Remix projects can be difficult to carry through without impacting in one way or another on the original versions, especially when an entire album is concerned. In the case of :Papercutz, the great respect with which each of the contributors treat Bruno Miguel Pereira Pinto’s delicate arrangements and Melissa Veras’s soft interpretation ensures that both original and remixed versions can exist side by side, complement each other which retaining their own identity.

4.5/5

:Papercutz | :Papercutz (MySpace) | Audiobuld Records
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: DLD

Lylac (He­lios Remix) from Audiobulb on Vimeo.

In the early 2000s, David Newman founded Audiobulb, a label which has since been a catalyst for contemporary electro-acoustic works and sound-based projects involving a wide range of artists. Two years ago, Newman released his debut album as Autistici, a project which he had started working on in 2000. We took the opportunity of the release of Detached Metal Voice – Early Works (Vol. 1), a collection of early material released on Audiobulb, to catch up with him and talk about both his music project and his label.

You’ve just released a collection of early recordings under your Autistici alias. On the record, there is no indication of when these tracks were recorded. Were these recorded over a long period of time?
Hello themilkfactory and thanks for the opportunity of this interview. The tracks on Detached Metal Voice – Early Works (Vol . 1) bring together my work from 2000-2003. This period of time represents the early days of Autistici.

The album is described as ‘a collection of early works exploring the raw extrusion of the human condition’. Was it a concept you were working on at the time, and how did you try to transcribe this concept into the music?
There is always context, the interplay between the external world and the internal psyche. There is definitely a sense of struggle with the human condition. In my work as a Clinical Psychologist I have to process the experience of people. Often the innate drive to develop, thrive, to reach out and connect with others has been damaged by experiences of abuse of trust and power. Sometimes part of surviving psychologically can involve disconnection from other people and from the self. Walls go up and the world is experienced in a different manner, detached, depersonalised and dissociated states predominate. This is a difficult place to be and as a therapist it is difficult to process. Issues of my own vulnerability and sense of self and the world are impacted upon. However I am supported positively through my own clinical supervision and the task of processing the difficult material is addressed there. However I needed another avenue to record residual aspects of my experience. Autistici gave me a chance to reprocess non-verbal elements of my world through the creation of abstract sound narratives.

While your first two albums had quite a pastoral feel, especially your first, Volume Objects, the music featured on this album is quite different, more varied in style and also darker, with harsher electronic sounds. Was it a conscious effort on your part to collects these on one record to showcase a different side of your work, and is this still relevant to the music you make today?
Detached Metal Voice – Early Works (Vol. 1) represents the work that went before Volume Objects which was recorded 2007-2009. It is more visceral and raw – dealing with a darker part of me at a particular point in my life. The process of the recordings was less planned and more organic. The process was one of emptying and catharsis.

This is volume 1. Do you have a lot more unreleased material lined up for release?
Yes, Slow Temperature – Early Works (Vol. 2) will be released later this year. It contains music predominately from 2001-2005 but the collection is more ambient and less harsh. It is a bridge to the works created for Volume Objects.

How did Autistici start? Was it your first project?
Autistici started at the point I could afford my own studio equipment and work on music again. Prior to this I had recorded works under different alias in the late 1980s and early nineties. At that point bands such as The Orb were a big influence of my work and I was making more commercial electronic dance music. However I could not afford my own equipment and had to save to get the cheap night time studio sessions. Writing music and doing the final mix as the sun came up and the dawn chorus rang in.

In an interview you gave to Textura a couple of years ago, you talked about the origin of Autistici and said that it ‘acknowledges the part of you that has an obsessive preoccupation with sound’, and you went on to mention people who have Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which manifests itself by problems to communicate or interact with others. How did you come to choose a name that highlights quite a serious disorder?
Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) represent a range of developmental disorders that tend to affect people’s ability to participate in and understand social communication and perspective taking. Alongside these difficulties there are often areas of relative strengths as people may focus on particular interests in an intense manner. Hyposensitivity to external stimuli can mean that the world is experienced in a qualitatively different way. For example, sounds can be amplified, tastes distorted, visual stimuli become overwhelming and pain thresholds can be substantially higher or lower. I have met many people with ASD and each one has their own unique and valid take on the world. To me it is not a “disorder” a medical term, it is simply a difficult difference but one we should all respect and value. Furthermore, ASD is a continuum condition and in that respect we are all on the continuum. The name started as a two word name as in “Autistic I”, an acknowledgement of my own intense preoccupation with sound and my own sensitivity to environmental audio stimuli. When I bought the domain name I realised it was easier to have a single word name and Autistic I became Autistici.

Volume Objects was published on Taylor Deupree’s 12k in 2008. How did you get to work with him?
Volume Objects was the result of an initial approach to Richard Chartier (12k/Line) whom I met following a performance of his work in Sheffield. He had been playing a set of beautiful minimal tones in an old warehouse building in the centre of Sheffield. I gave him a copy of my music and invited him to listen. Richard emailed soon after and told me that my sound could be suitable for 12k. The next stage was contact with Taylor Deupree. Taylor was interested in working with new artists and expanding the 12k repertoire. Blueprints featured two tracks from the artists Christmas Decorations, Seaworthy, Jodi Cave, Pjusk, Leo Abrahams and Autistici. The compilation was well received and gave Taylor and myself a platform to discuss a full release. The next stage was working with Taylor to bring together a coherent album that worked for 12k and worked for me. Taylor and myself honed down Volume Objects paying attention to the flow, the diversity and the coherence of the track listing.

Last year, your second album, Complex Tone Test, was published on Kesh Recordings, the label set up by Simon Scott. Did you know him prior to this?
Simon found my work via my myspace page and we started talking about the release from there. It was great to work with Simon whom I met in person for the first time this year.

These two albums, while sharing some common grounds, are quite different. How did they come together? Did you have a particular plan for each one of them, or are they more collections of tracks in a particular vein recorded over a long period of time?
Complex Tone Test contains some tracks that would fit with the 12k aesthetic, however it also contains tracks with rhythm elements and distorted electronics more fitting to the Kesh style. I am always recording music and I treat each track as a separate entity. I am not concerned to stay within a particular style or genre. This means I have a collection of works of varying styles. The common element is that I am the creator and I have my own ideas regarding what narratives and structures I pursue. However when it comes to releasing an album it is important to create a macro narrative. This forms the ebb and flow of the album and influences the listening experience. Just as track after track of soft ambience may send a listener into a dissociated sleepy state, track after track of full on harsh noise may send the listener into a dissociated irritated or over aroused state. In my view it is good to have albums that build and occupy space and then fall away and provide space. It is the extremes of the experience that support the listener to focus on the impact of the audio.

You have been running your own label, Audiobulb, since 2003. What made you decide to start the label, and looking back at your catalogue, have you achieved what you set out to?
I started the label out of deep respect for the work of unreleased artists whom I believed I could support through media exposure. Not all of them are active now – but artists such as Erik Schoster (He Can Jog), Simon Kealoha (Calika), Henry Leo Duclos, Build, Disastrato, Claudia and Marion all had such a great creative aesthetic. I am also very interested in design, marketing, PR and establishing a brand on the internet. I wondered to myself, “this new social sphere – what happens if you walk out and use its tools and systems – how far can I take it?” If you are asking me whether I have achieved what I set out to achieve in 2003, then the answer is a resounding yes. However my ideas and aspirations continually evolve and develop. I am always looking to achieve new opportunities on behalf of the label for its artists. I believe in the people and their work. I want them to reach all the audience that could be open to them.

Right from the start, you have released both digital-only and traditional CD releases, at a time where digital formats were still a novelty. Could you feel at the time that they would become so predominantly in such a short period of time?
Yes. As older established labels struggled to come to terms with the shifting market conditions Audiobulb was new and flexible. It took a couple of years to get a good handle on the state of play and conditions are always changing but I think a combination of digital and where there is demand physical CDs is the way to go. The physical digital evolution is ongoing and I believe that very soon everyone will be buying wav quality digital releases as their download speeds and hardware capacities improve. I believe the electronic equipment companies will move toward higher definition CDs (24 or 32 bit). This will continue the pressure on consumers to upgrade and update and will provide them with a new market to tap (just like the impact of blue ray/ HD television images). I for one am hoping for 32 bit audio, people will argue against it and point to limitations in human hearing but I can hear the difference. At the end of the day we all have different acoustic perception.

As a consumer of music, are you more of a vinyl, CD or MP3 type of person?
I love the quality and warmth of vinyl. I adore the subtle crackle of the needle on the record. If you visit the Audiobulb webpage that sound is there – all the time built into the experience. However, with vinyl you have to flip the record halfway through the album, I do not like the interruption of flow to my listening experience. I am more of a CD person and like to listen through high quality systems. I do use MP3s, I bought my first iPod four months ago but MP3s encoded at 128 get me down – FLAC is a better option.

The music you’ve released over the years has been quite varied, although there is definitely an emphasis on electro-acoustic work. How do you choose to release a particular record, and how do you decide between traditional CD and all digital release formats?
Quality and artistic vision are the guiding principles for all the releases on Audiobulb. Some of the releases showcase the work of one artist but many are works by a group – the “various”. I am deeply interested in how different artists approach a single idea or project and it excites me to hear how unique each approach is and the final pieces of music that emerge. I have always been a fan of remixes particularly of electronic music. I think projects such as the current :Papercutz album, the Favourite Places series, Birmingham Sound Matter and the Exhibition series all illustrate Audiobulb’s interest in exploring conceptual similarities and difference. Projects such as these also allow you to work with a range of inspirational artists, in recent years Biosphere, Taylor Deupree, Helios, Simon Scott, Jeremy Bible, Leafcutter John and Icarus and many more have all contributed to this exploration of the modern composer. In terms of decisions regarding CD and digital versus digital only – that is purely a question of economics and demand. Artists such as Ultre, He Can Jog and Jimmy Behan can create enough demand to warrant a CD run. Other releases or artists may produce work that is unlikely to sell a minimum number of CDs and so we release in the digital domain. However, regardless of the format all releases represent quality beautiful works that deserves to be heard.

Record labels have a pretty tough time at the moment, and have had for a few years now. How do you manage to keep your head above the water and continue to release music regularly?
I’m committed to what I do and continue to feel excited, challenged and motivated by running the label. I enjoy the learning about the market and how to operate the label in a manner that maintains its aesthetic quality and financial stability. A lot of graft is required to ensure the PR process is sufficient and the information about the music is out there. At the end of the day it is good to be able to pay artists for what they do. It is a return; a recognition and reward for all their hard work.

Why have you waited so long to release your own music on Audiobulb?
I had to undergo a process. I write because I need to. I do wonder how the sound would be perceived by others but I do not expect others to want to engage with my work. I needed to undergo a process of peer review. I needed to put my music into the hands of other label owners who did not know me. I was looking to receive an unbiased reaction to my work from my peers. I now feel confident enough to release some works on my own label. However, I will always look to work with other people – simply because if they are releasing my music I am freed up to release the music of other artists working with Audiobulb. This year there will three releases featuring Autistici work. These include the two Early Works (Vol . 1 & 2) and a remix album called Resonating Wires which will feature reconstructions of the Resonating Wire track taken from Complex Tone Test. The album contains outstanding and diverse works from artists such as Francisco López, Richard Chartier, Jimmy Behan, Isan, Claudia, He Can Jog, Ian Hawgood & Danny Norbury, Simon Scott, Bluermutt & Sawako. What I love about this release is the fact that a single track can provoke artists to reinterpret the material so differently – from extreme minimalism to abstract concrete sounds to orchestration to dance.

How did the Favourite Places project, which is based on artists providing music relating to a particular place they like, come up, and how did you get them involved?
As I’ve indicated, I have always enjoyed working around projects and concepts. Audiobulb has a dedicated project page where the Root Of Sine and Endless Endless projects run. Favourite Places continues in the same vein. It gives artists a direction to place themselves in a particular psycho-audio environment in order to capture and create. I really liked the comprehensive nature of the project. The fact we could record time, place (latitude and longitude), visual imprints, audio imprints, subjective text, and creative musical interpretations all defining one place from one person’s point of view. In terms of getting people on board it was a case of using connections and talking to the artists. They believed I could deliver and they were happy to be involved. I am extremely proud of all that has been achieved via the Favourite Places project, I think it really works well. The project was made even more robust by the unique hand finished design concept for the CD created by the wonderful guys Stereographic and by the interactive website created by my brother Andrew Newman.

There have been two instalments of Favourite Places so far. Are you working on a third one?
I am not actively working on a third one. I think the first two instalments need time to breathe and be found by listeners. However when the time and people are right it could well happen.

How do you see the label evolve in the next few years? Is there anyone you would like to release the music of?
I like to support the label to evolve in an organic fashion. I see myself as a curator, someone who has a degree of vision and who can steer a course. But I have to let myself be influenced by what I come into contact with on a day to day basis. New artists or new works by people I have already worked with. Some of that is out of my hands. I would love to release further albums by Ultre, He Can Jog and Jimmy Behan. I am allowing Audiobulb to become more diverse, to work with bands such as :Papercutz and The Hole Punch Generation and to release tracks that are songs! My passion and interests still remain in the electro-acoustic crossover of sounds from minimal ambience to quirky off centre beats characterised by the work of artists such as Calika. Only time will tell, there is no place for rigidity in today’s market.

Last but not least, if you had to name five records, books, films or works of art, which one would you choose, and why?
I live in the world of sound. I would choose five records that live in my psyche and have shaped my experience of myself and the world. I would then realise that five would not be enough and the need to hone down the list would stress me out! Thanks for the interview and best wishes with the excellent Milk Factory.

Autistici | Autistici (MySpace) | Audiobulb

AUTISTICI
Detached Metal Voice – Early Works Vol. 1
AB028
Audiobulb 2010
11 Tracks. 47mins58secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

It’s barely been a few months since Autistici’s second album, Complex Tone Test, was released, yet here comes another collection of fine electronic music from David Newman, published on his excellent Audiobulb imprint. This time though, the album collates early recordings and brings a variety of experiments under one umbrella. No indication is given to when these tracks were recorded, but they are linked by a taste for retro-futuristic technologies, especially early voice synthesis experiments developed in the sixties and seventies in the US by the Bell Laboratories, an AT&T research site based in New Jersey, and old style electronic instrumentation.  

The album draws influences from far beyond the electronica realm, occasionally hinting at classical or jazz forms, yet the result is predominantly electronic and textural in aspect, using a vast array of glitches and sonic interferences at the core of each piece. This defines the record right from the opening track, On A Beach Of Pure Data, which kicks off with a constant discharge of electricity before getting into a mechanical groove, and continues to cast a shadow throughout the record. Things become a tad warmer on Colonic People thanks to a particularly effective jazz groove, nicely finished by sporadic lashes of rounded double bass, but the track is drowned in toxic layers of noise and reverb towards the end, and things are back to harsh metallic rhythmic patterns, sometimes tainted with ominous strips of ambient soundscapes (It Contains A Diagnosis, Beneath) at others left bare and dry (Ligaments, BlaK BloK).

On Babyman, Newman puts very human and real interactions and emotions into the imaginary mouths of computers to create a rather disturbing dystopian tale. Do robots dream of electric sheep? Who knows, but in the hands of Newman, computers seem capable of some sentiments, synthetic or otherwise. On Whispering Mongo Man, he puts the voice through a very different process. Using a John Lennon interview as primary source, but removing all traces of words spoken by the interviewee, retaining only his breathing, Newman totally obliterates the message, leaving the listener to imagine the missing content. Only vague pointers are thrown in with other ghostly processed voices to occasionally try to make sense, rather unsuccessfully it has to be said, of the lost discussion. Elsewhere, fragments of conversations find their way through the corrosive beats of It Contains A Diagnosis, while heavy breathing, at times unprocessed, at others distorted, give the already inhospitable They Move On Me a dark twist.

On the whole, Detached Metal Voice is a much more menacing and tensed collection than Autistici’s recent album, and while it is a less consistent record, due possibly to its tracks having been presumably recorded over a period of time, it is still a very fine collection of assertive electronica by a confident musician. If this record is anything to go by, another trip down the Autistic vaults of unreleased music is definitely something to look forward to: roll on volume two!

4.6/5

Autistici | Autistici (MySpace) | Audiobulb Records
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

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

Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

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.

The locations selected vary greatly here, ranging from the South Downs between London and Brighton (in two instances), a derelict concrete factory in Ohio, a forest near Brisbane, to a suburban Belgian town, a public walkway in North London, a bedroom in Brooklyn, or the Peak District National Park near Sheffield, yet, perhaps due to the very nature of the project and of the artists involved, there are great sonic consistency throughout the record. Apart for He Can Jog’s Erik Schoster who uses his bed as his source location, the other nine artists use outdoors settings as the starting point for their respective contributions, feeding sounds ranging from wind sweeping though landscapes or birdsongs to running water, rain or distant traffic noises into densely atmospheric collages where music often occurs as an impressionist counterpoint.

This especially the case on Lawrence English’s opening Quiet Planigale, which originally seems to catalogue all sorts of birdsongs but eventually gives way to a sombre drone over which lighter fragments of hazy melody take shape, or on Michael Santos’s Perfect Pitch, where field recordings, collected along Parkland Walk, between Finsbury Park and Highgate, occupy solely the first segment of the track, before outstretched chimes come in, arranged as to evoke light playing through branches and leaves. Autistici’s Winter Heather, Frozen Breath works on a similar concept, David Newman originally focusing on a walk through the vast spaces of the Peak District National Park before bringing in gently shimmering sounds to convey an element of the wide open space serving as inspiration for the track. It is also the format adopted by Michael Trommer on his portrayal of Toronto’s underground pedestrian network for TD Path 6. To complement the urban setting of the opening two and a half minute, Trommer distils a haunting and dense series of soundscapes in the remaining section of the track, crystallising the transient aspect of the paths network and its anonymity in a surprisingly vivid way.

Icarus take the concept into a different direction by intricately linking the sounds recorded on the South Downs (football commentaries on a portable radio, human voices, insects, car noises) and the music they extract from them, articulating these two phases against each other. This is also partially the case with He Can Jog’s extremely clever Woodbine Entwist, although producing a radically different result. Here, the bed, and by extension the bedroom, is integrant part of the song, not so much through the sounds used as through the low-fi approach to the colourful electronically-tainted folk that develops from the experiment, a reminder that the music was recorded in his own living space.

Like its predecessor, this second volume of Favourite Places collects sounds and impressions, and reflects the choices made by the various contributors. Frequently characteristic of their usual work, these tracks are like open windows into the inspiration of musicians, giving an interesting, if often highly unusual and personal, insight into their intimate spaces.

4.4/5

Audiobulb Records
Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

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. This is very much the case with the more minimal pieces found here. The fluid drone structures of Refractory or Meadow Bed are extremely bare and gossamer, but are animated by a momentum deep within their respective sonic fabric which gives them a particular sheen, while the ampler La Spaziale S1 Vivaldi at times seems to echo in all sorts of directions at once.

This time round though, Newman pushes purely electronic components much more forward and deploys an arsenal of clicks and glitches to give tracks such as Meticule, Resonating Wire, Closing or Annualized Light (2.2) a totally different outline. The result is particularly impressive on Resonating Wire and Annualized Light (2.2), which, despite pretty desolate backdrops, are given strong relief with just a few additional noises, while the glitches heard toward the beginning of Meticule progressively gather into a fully-formed rhythmic pulse later on. Elsewhere, Newman brings richer patterns to his electro-acoustic formations. The mellotron-fuelled Key For A Lockable Cabinet is a particularly vibrant and pastoral piece, while later, the more complex layering of real instruments and electronics on Disintegrated Interest pushes the record in a much more challenging direction for a moment.

Stepping in the limelight once again as Autistici, David Newman has created with Complex Tone Test, a record that takes the space defined by its predecessor and expands it greatly, without altering its very essence in the slightest. The result is particularly convincing, ensuring Autistici’s place amongst the more imaginative musicians of his generation.

4.6/5

Autistici | Autistici (MySpace) | Keshhhhhh Recordings
Boomkat: CD

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. Autistici ensures that the featured objects or source sounds are indeed of a spectral nature. The edges of each are smoothed down or frayed, and polished until they gleam in a way that makes them all sound strangely similar. Wire Cage For Tiny Birds features prickly whirlpools and a glassy shimmer that suggests rain falling in a moonlit sky, but then, in a stealthy manner, Autistici eclipses that presence with clouds of sweet cosmic static. It is these juxtapositions which manage to plant a sense of quietly astonishing incident within these works. There is a bracing astringency and definite economy of approach to the compositions, yet the fluid subtlety of construction either affords them a certain dramatic momentum or the ability to brim with richness.

Only on occasion does he seem to get lost in the labyrinth of his own project, the digital twists and cut-ups getting somewhat away from him. Otherwise these glitchscapes achieve a radiance of appearance, refracting sound sources into a mercurial flood, allusively suggesting form and structure, and maintaining just enough textural warmth and serendipitous, fleeting beauty to sustain the listener along the way.

4/5

Autistici | 12K
Buy: iTunes