The latest release from the Absence of Wax netlabel is a lengthy rumble by Albert Ortega. Based in Los Angeles, Ortega reportedly mixes field recordings and electronic processing to achieve his unique, partially “real,” partially “artificial” ends. Little of the real world is necessarily evident in one such final result, “Internal Weather,” but the track’s title and sonic properties hint at what is going on.
To begin with, the latter: while mechanical in its immediate appearance, the uptempo rattle that is at the heart of “Internal Weather” is closer to that of an unintended rhythm, like a car or a refrigerator, than that of an intended rhythm, like a song with a proper beat. There’s a beauty to such an unintended rhythm because despite its appearance of having an inhuman motor, it is in fact fluid and impossible to pin down metrically. This aligns it, aesthetically, with generative art.
As for that title, “Internal Weather” touches on the way a systems-based compositional approach such as Ortega’s can come to constitute its own small-scale ecosystem.
Proceed to devinsarno.com/absenceofwax for free streaming and download. Caveat: the download is enormous, almost half a gigabyte.
the sound you hear is amplified snare wire feeding back on a bass amplifier . I chose a tonally rich acoustic object over a guitar..and prefer to allow the former to play its own melody…um…thats all.