Disquiet

There’s no didgeridoo on the five-track album Altered Signals by Mystified (aka Thomas Park), but there may as well be. Much of the music heard here has the slow, otherworldly onomatopoeia of that aboriginal device. The collection opens with the title cut: the crackle of data, the ping of noises echoing in a long, narrow chamber (MP3). Then comes “Bell Cloud,” which is all industrial chatter (MP3). In “Vocal Tremors” you can hear the deeply submerged speaking amid the crumpled metal (MP3). “Octavepus” is a heavenly drone, a kind of android Tuvan singing (MP3). And “Science of Change” is like some unimaginably large prayer bowl, its resonance echoing at an extravagantly sedate pace into the distance (MP3). According to the set’s release notes, much of the source material originated in some form of broadcast, suggesting there was already some aural decay at work before Park got his hands on the elements from which Altered Signals was built. More info at the website of the releasing netlabel, darkwinter.com, and at Mystified/Park’s mystifiedmusic.com.

By Marc Weidenbaum