Disquiet

White noise is a common enough staple of sonic experimentation. What surprises, and engages, in Phil Julian‘s “Recent Errors” is when, at around two minutes in, the track suddenly shifts states. It goes from grey drone to scintillate whine in a split second. And that subsequent section itself has reveals transformations as it progresses, dipping down in volume, sending out thin contrasting lines of sound (MP3). These aren’t the last shifts in the piece, by any means. It continues on to include industrial churn and 8bit cicada chirping, among other phases. Track originally made available at the netlabel Absence of Wax, at devinsarno.com/absenceofwax. Track housed at archive.org. Julian, who also records as Cheapmachines, makes his home in the UK and at cmx.org.uk.

By Marc Weidenbaum