If less is more, then the UK trio Baraclough is the most. A live in-studio recording from early last year captures them collaborating on little more than squiggly rumbles, choked static, rhythmic shorthand, gray drones, and other modest noises (MP3).
Looped applause at the set’s opening manages to be both sonically enticing and contextually telling. Only for a moment is the applause believable as having originated with a live studio audience. After a few splices, the looping becomes self-evident, as is also the case with the militarist drum-corps percussion that follows. A performance that opens with canned applause, and that then ventures immediately into the deepest, dustiest recesses of performers’s drum machines and samplers? It’s just perfect. What follows is an hour of controlled noise, alternating between expanses of industrial soundscapes — the section about 12 minutes before the track comes to a close is especially noteworthy — and churning digital aggression.
Baraclough are Paul de Casparis, Dale Cornish, and Eddie Nuttall (that’s the same Dale Cornish who supplied the rain field recordings for yesterday’s Disquiet Downstream entry, by Philip Marshall). More on Baraclough at baraclough.co.uk (and the inevitable myspace.com/baraclough). More on the members at myspace.com/pauldec, dalecornish.com, and eddienuttall.co.uk. More on Ill FM, which first broadcast the performance, at illfm.net.