Disquiet

Don’t let the initial softness of João Ricardo‘s new release on the Test Tube netlabel, Stepping Stone, lull you into any sense of comfort. Fissures will strike, and small noises will make themselves known, in rhythmic patterns that are more verbal than metrical, more about the insinuation of life than about effecting momentum.

Those early, subtle swells, given texture from an economical employment of static, eventually make way for a suite-like, long-form, half-hour performance (MP3).  Later in the piece, alternate techniques will be brought to be bear on string instruments, heard in looping patterns of loosely strung guitar, then smatterings of rough percussion, then dark and claustrophobic scratchy explorations, before closing with an almost soothing (key word: almost) stretch of minimalist sound design.

Stepping Stone is, admirably, a single-song release, which is a format particularly suitable to netlabels, where music is made available for free download and distribution by the musician and releasing organization. The compression of the musical experience into one, individual, standalone track adds to the immediacy of the experience, and thus to the sense of unmediated communication between artist and audience.

Ricardo, recording as OCP (or Operador de Cabine Polivalente), isn’t here just stringing together diverse modes. For example, those loose strings connect to the rough percussion thanks to the manner by which the analog source material fits into the electro-acoustic setting, and the subsequent claustrophobia is impressive precisely because of the exit of the more organic sounds that had appeared earlier. Like any successful suite, this one is marked by narrative intent, one that compels and rewards close listening.

Get additional info at monocromatica.com/netlabel. More on Ricardo at ocp.pt.vu.

If you have time this evening for one track, dig into the free EP Three feet of by Brometer and focus on its penultimate entry, titled “Rotation.” The track opens with a mere slip of white noise, looped so as to let the point between repeats serve as a vaguely rhythmic element, with a slowly encroaching, then wistfully enveloping, miasma of muted sounds, maybe scraps of horns and backward-masked found recordings (MP3). In a brief accompanying liner note, Brometer (aka Nottingham, England-based Mark Sargison) says, “All of the music is recorded using the built in microphone on my Macbook, a 3 pounds organ and little else.” That explains the exquisite fragility that’s heard here, and that’s also infused in the album’s more fleshed out cuts, like the brief guitar-noise figment of “Stolen” (MP3), with which the album closes, and the digitally manipulated folk detritus that constitutes “A Trap” (MP3), all surface textures and circling guitar lines. Get the full thing at semlabel.com/iod. More on Brometer at myspace.com/brometer, where he’s currently streaming a non-EP song, a slowly building cacophony of what may be excited cymbals or stroked glass.

If the idea of electronic music from the Ukraine brings to mind crackling radio static, melodies seemingly sampled from rusty old circus carousels, and vintage synthesizers that have seen better days, then the album Disaster in Room 208 won’t do much to disabuse you of your prejudices.

But rest assured that all of those elements are very much in the album’s favor. Recorded by OK_01 (aka Oleg Kovalchuk) and released on the Surreal Madrid netlabel, Disaster in Room 208 collects six tracks that are all the more enticing due to their threadbare nature. “Happy End” mixes scratchy noise, distant syrupy strings, and a sweet guitar line, never quite letting any of the layers match with the others (MP3). “Driving – Screws” opens with a brief retro-rock moment (think Billy Childish at his most dissolute) before the sound gets warped, as if the FM station was shifted slightly and the music suddenly exposed some mischievous alternate agenda — insert Cold War surveillance imagery here (MP3). Likewise “Rocky,” which plays with a squelchy sine wave like it’s a theremin, above a chipper chip-tune rhythm and a recording of water that lends the imminent threat of a short circuit (MP3).

And that’s just half the set. Get the full thing, and more more details, at surrealmadrid.net.