I had been away from the fantastic Rune Grammofon label for some time, but I
just picked up Phonophani's "Genetic Engineering," and it's brilliant. A
wonderful, morphing mass of delicate and nuanced sound - the opener,
"Lavenderloops," combines spiderwebbing harmonics and distant vocodings into
something approximating Japanese string music as played by Richard Devine.
Ok, maybe I'm taking descriptive liberties, but this is the kind of album
that encourages that.
Rune Grammofon has always boasted a broader sonic palette than almost any
other "experimental" label out there, and Phonophani's latest is no
exception. Shards of free jazz, noise, ambiance, melody, field recordings,
souring BoC-like synths; it's "organic" like Fennesz, crackled like Pimmon,
yet totally its own thing at the same time. (Phonophani is Alog's Espen
Sommer Eide, by the way.)
Fucking beautiful, and a lot more interesting than most of the obvious cack
that gets discussed around here these days. (Sorry, had to vent.) Don't
sleep on this.
Philip