Disquiet

For all the invigorating monotony and sound-design immersion of techno, the best moments in a given track often occur at the opening instant. That suggestion isn’t to disregard the rapturous glories of Zen stasis and of tectonic-shift micro-development inherent in the best techo. But that opening moment of a track is when a crevice opens, and vapor trails of what might yet happen waft up. Soon enough the beat kicks in and it’s more or less easy to extrapolate what’s to come, but for that moment it’s generally a small array of noises that are yet to settle into an organized whole. If music is organized sound, then for that moment, it’s still sound. (Making such a distinction has gotten me into trouble in the past, so perhaps paraphrasing Edgard Varèse will inoculate me.) The great title track off Norw Y by Inteam (aka Zwickau, Germany’s Florian Willuhn) is no exception (MP3). Enticing bits of pin-drop percussion and pneumatic pulsing soon give way to a dubby holding pattern. What follows, though, turns out to be more diverse than much techo; it’s a veritable suite, especially when what seems to be a taut snatch of accordion appears midway. Willuhn manages to introduce such surprises throughout, and each time the introduction of a new sound reinvigorates the track, as if it’s starting anew. For a moment, it’s just sound — strange, enticing sound — and then, an instant later, it’s formalized into music.

There are four tracks in all on Norw Y, available for free from the auflegware.de netlabel.

Unlike a lot of collaborations by ambient musicians, the recent dual effort by Devin Underwood and Marcus Fischer sounds, in fact, like more than one person is doing the work. In general, ambient music is about the sublime: maximum effort for minimum impact, a surface of almost ignorable refinement masking all manner of activity buried deep below. Individual ambient musicians strive to make something that is both worthy of attention and capable of being relegated to the backdrop. Two musicians working together in an ambient mode need to find a balance without so forsaking their individual voices that the fact of the collaboration becomes almost a distraction from the singularity of the finished work.

Which brings us to Correspond, the Underwood-Fischer collaboration, five tracks that mix a songless haziness with sharp fragments and a deep sense of longing. The choices the duo make are unusual, like the muffled discontent evident in the half-heard speaking voice that enters in toward the end of the opening track, “Wind,” and the zithery and flute-like instruments that peek out of the tremulous cloud formation that is “Contrails and Mountains.” Foghorn resounding and watery samples conflict artfully with the title of “Snow on the Streets.” In “Crystal Radio,” what seems like true classical ambient music — this textured sonic muslin un-spooled by the yard — gets occasional breaks, tiny nanoscale fissures into the otherwise contemplative bliss.

Highly recommended, all the way through. It’s streaming at distancerecordings.com, and available as a Zip archive of MP3 files or the larger, “lossless” FLAC files. More on Fischer at unrecnow.com and Underwood at spectaciera.com.