On 17 May 2002 at 9:15, Greg::Malcolm . wrote:
quoted 1 line to any dutch listers...> to any dutch listers...
Well, I'm not Dutch, but German & Afrikaans... and I haven't even
heard any of your music, but here goes.
(PS, where's my free set of headphones for this ? :-) )
+++
The comositions of Greg Malcolm and Chad Mossholder, aka Twine, are
typical products of our digital age. Both work as sound engineers in
different parts of the US, but build their music step by step via the
wonders of the Internet.
Sounds and samples are exchanged and constructed in this manner to
form unusual soundscapes, which, notwithstanding their high degree of
abstraction, still make you choke with emotion (it's a metaphoric
term, meaning roughly this).
Circulation appeared last year (on the Swedish label Komplott) which,
in our humble opinion, was a small architectural-sound masterpiece
and also their concert at the last (K-raa-K)3 festival made so good
an impression, as to raise expectations for their new work
considerably.
There's quite a lot planned for the near future: within a few months
they have new work appearing on Hefty and Faelt and their music will
also be heard at various installations, including the Sonic Process
project in Barcelona.
In the interim we are kept happy with their recently released
"Recorder" on Bip-Hop - a renewed challenge and inventive search for
fresh sound structures.
Twine's music finds great degrees of inspiration from the ideas of
John Cage and Stockhausen, which evolve from deconstructing and
decontextualising sound and developing a digitally generated network
of communicating spaces.
The satisfying sounds each search out their niche within the chaos -
curious and restless. In "None Some Silver", one lethargic guitar
riff is stoked with a furnace-like outburst of noise, which slowly
emerges through a jetblack wash of din.
In "Cign" we hear panicked beats echo, while somewhere in the
distance a lone cello weeps. In "Fine Music" you are further pulled
into a dark swamp, where all kinds of unfathomable sounds and voices
increase the tension.
These are soundscapes full of reverberations that rise up from the
underground both all around you and nowhere, shifting shape and
changing colour, calling up stubborn doubts : nothing is as it
appears.
Case in point being "Player Piano", where a murmuring piano melody
disppears without trace between layers of skittering distortion and
fragmented voices, only to re-emerge unexpectedly later, interwoven
with an underwater orchestra.
To a large extent, Twine's music is based on the random development
of sound organisms : abstract noise, fragmented melodies, alienated
sounds are given new and personal meaning in their compositions,
those which carry a disturbing impact... unfamiliar emotions that
skip between
melancholy, fear and dread.
"I know I should be sad, and I am, part of me is, but it's like ...
it's like I'm having the most beautiful
dream and the most terrible nightmare all at once" materialises
somewhere in "There in No One Else". A sample from Twin Peaks, which
perfectly captures the atmosphere here.
+++
I
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