The folks behind touchradio.org.uk must be major fans of New Criticism, since they posit their audio on the web regularly with little enough contextual information for the word “scant” to sound generous. In the end, though, what is generous is the audio itself. The podcast series is a marvel of experimental audio, often though not always drawing from field recordings as source information. Among the latest is “The Only Known Photograph of Bruce Gilbert,” the photograph in question, reprinted above, a dark box with barely the outline of a figure. The sound is a rapture-inducing shadow itself, low key clangs, a simple dirge of a rhythm, and dusty ambience in full effect.
The work was performed on November 1, 2012, as part of a show featuring Gilbert, Mike Harding, and Achim Mohné. Details on the show at khm.de.