Another treasure from ubu.com: the 1993 album by Bernhard Günter, Un Peu de Neige Salie. Well, four of the original album’s five tracks, judging by various discographic reference sources. Günter is a major micro-sonicist, and these tracks exemplify his detail-oriented approach, even if one of them is, by his own explanation, a real career anomaly. It is also a very early example of glitch, the sound of microscopic error, a sound that was arguably to then-nascent electronic music what the blue note was to jazz.
The piece is the one with which the album opens, “Untitled I/92”; it is, in its composer’s own words, “the only work using synthesized sounds I have ever released” (MP3).
|titles=”Untitled I/92″|artists=Bernhard Günter]
And it’s not just for historical reasons that the track is required listening. It is metronomically glitchy, drawing the ear in with ever so minute sounds. These little aural pin pricks set down the barest of rhythms, only to be upset by sudden shuddering — even giving in, somehow being subsumed by, a sound that by all measure save experience is even tinier still. It’s a high-pitched, dogs-worst-friend whine that’s filament thin and all the more compelling, attention-grabbing, for its near-non-existence. In the end, it’s like some figment particle fixated on by a sleep-deprived physicist.
Get the full set at ubu.com. More on Günter at myspace.com/bernhardguenter.
Back in the heady days of fusion, and later on repeat during the heights of acid-jazz, texture was perhaps the discernible feature distinguishing depth from froth. The rough, saliva-tinged exaltations of Miles Davis kept his electric-era work grounded — in contrast with the high-tone lounge music of his third-generation descendants. On the fifth and penultimate track of Innereyefull‘s EP of hip-hop-derived instrumentals, Blunted Soul, “Kickin Back,” a light bit of vinyl noise opens the track. What follows is a solid groove that edges into psychedelia, slowing the head to a nod, an echoed vocal sample occasionally punctuating the molasses-mode tempo. What makes the track stand out from the collection is how that surface noise comes to serve as part of the rhythm, part of what proves to be an especially addictive downtempo shuffle (
