Disquiet

Esther Venrooy‘s The Spiral Staircase album is represented on the website of its releasing label, Entr’acte (entracte.co.uk), by a single download (MP3), six and a half minutes of saw-toothed wave forms that suggest music several decades in the past, a time when oscillators were all the rage, and when digital operations on data were the stuff of science fiction. It’s the sort of music that when you watch your MP3 player’s visualizer, you think you’re looking at the actual score, not merely a visual interpretation of the original music. The saw waves reveal themselves, in time, to be couched in remote overtones, underlying drones that don’t soften the central music’s edges so much as shade them. More on Venrooy at esthervenrooy.com.

By Marc Weidenbaum