Disquiet

The Dorobo record label has produced a four-track compilation of resolutely elemental sounds. The title of the compilation is Grain, which suggests both the physical-world reality of dust and texture, and the compositional technique known as “granular synthesis.” (Granular synthesis involves the production of a long-form composition as the end result of individual actions made on exactingly brief sound samples.) The album includes work by four Australian composers: Philip Samartzis (“Microphonics”), Pimmon (“Slegner Forgets”), Darrin Verhagen (“_frame”) and David Brown (“Voices of the Air Shaft”). At nearly 18 and a half minutes in length, “Microphonics” is the longest, and most widely ranging, piece on the album. From small scratchy sounds, to nearby bells and distant voices, it might be a recording made of a composer’s workshop with a window left open — while the composer is asleep on the couch. Pimmon’s entry is considerably more static, unnervingly so, with the quiet hum of an after-hours industrial site. Verhagen’s is quieter still, at least at the start, albeit with a more lively percussive element, by far the warmest thing on the entire album. Brown’s “Voices” is shrill and dramatic, and appears to have been derived from orchestral music; there are sounds of string sections and percussion and coarsely edited vocals. It is as eventful as the rest of the album is quiet, and ends even more suddenly than it begins.

The title of the compilation Music to Listen to Music By (Privatelektro Records) may have been intended as a joke, but it’s worth taking at least a little seriously — what with John Cage’s famous comparison, in his book Silence, of music to wire sculptures through which one views other things. The album title suggests music that is so quiet that it can be added to other music like so much salt and pepper. In fact, though, it isn’t volume that distinguishes the 13 cuts here from pop music; it’s their eschewing of static metrical structure for a more open form, like the industrial static and drone of Alias‘ “Darkdust” and the semi-chaotic jitters of triPhaze‘s “Kilmarnok.” There is no self-apparent downbeat, or chorus, or verse, to be heard on most of the album. Instead there’s the ominous “Early Walk to the Busstation” (also credited to triPhaze), which sounds like a UFO field recording, a theme picked up on “300 Years and Waiting,” which teams triPhaze with another contributor to the compilation, listed here as Mr. Sakori. One other thing, besides a purposeful lack of rhythm, that binds much of the tracks together is the presence of vocal samples, which share a B-movie flavor. An alternate title might have been Music to Witness Alien Invasions By.

Ben Swire‘s Equilibrium consists of four tracks that balance synthesized backdrops with pointilist percussion. On “Interim,” it’s a glitchy little rhythmic figure atop an aural swell. On “Departure,” it’s initially what sound like heavily echoed castanets atop a deep, building resonance. The EP is the first in a series of mid-length releases from Foundry, a San Francisco Bay area label run by musician Michael Bentley. Swire is an Amherst-educated musician who has recorded with, among others, Riz Maslen (Neotropic). Swire has a film composer’s way with extended moods (Equililbrium‘s fourth track is titled “Score”), and his compositions develop along narrative lines, moving from scene to scene with dramatic intent. On “Departure,” for example, those initial castanets develop first into drum’n’bass and later into a locomotive trance. As is Bentley’s plan, the EP length lends the release a compact conceptual certainty.