Oima - Sucking Isis
Performed and produced by David Mutch and Magda Crace
www.oima.de

This is the first Oima’s CD that I have ever listened to and the whole CD as a unitary work has attracted me: it paints for us, in fact, a touchable continuity. It is often difficult to notice the transition between two contiguous tracks because a characteristic element of a new track is frequently found in the final part of the previous one. This element can be a rhythmic pattern or a timbre and, of course, it does not mean that the same constitutive component is inserted in both tracks, but the elements of connection have something in common.

I only heard a clear interruption between the third track (‘Nano’) and the fourth one (‘Magneto’), and it seems to me a defined aesthetical choice; and I found also a breakpoint between ‘Gullabye Sub’ and ‘Brushman Whole’ (the last track), and in which the choice seems to tell the listener: “Our work is finishing”. Sometimes the link has been realized with a graft such as between ‘Metatron’ and ‘Softer Persuasion’: the start of ‘Softer Persuasion’ has been juxtaposed at the end of ‘Metatron’.

This music is a perpetual fountain of sounding material that evolves continuously. It is like somebody that speaks properly on all subjects but he knows what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; a continence which is practiced by few musicians. Apart from the stunning clarity of the sonorities of this work, the most noticeable thing about these pieces is their normality: flowing pads, drums, percussion, sharp sounds, and human voices. We find some similar sonorities in our own everyday life. Oima explores impulses and motives, and presents them in a so vividly a way that we feel we can touch them.

Every time there is no drums or percussion the sonic environment creates suggestive imagery, like something of the bygone centuries. I do not know why but I have thought of a myth in a historical setting rather than history of historical legend with a mythical dimension.

Review by Giuseppe Rapisarda, Paternò (CT), Italy.

Jean Routhier - Endurance
Aurore001 Aurore Nocturne www.aurorenocturne.com

You can't be too careful in your choice of CD titles - especially in the case of this CD. Most of the works on this CD contain fragmented materials, anything from telephone conversations to The Shadows (without Cliff (thank goodness)) are assembled in a pretty random order. Bergson famously claimed that there was no such thing as disorder, just an absence of the particular order you were looking for - he might have added that some kinds of order just aren't that interesting, or perhaps I'm just not getting it.

The first three tracks on this CD really don't contain anything I found to be interesting in terms of structure and even the basic materials which are assembled are not necessarily that interesting with some featuring rather obvious looping. Yet those loops don't set up any real feel of structure through insistence - something which can be said of Yves Beaupre's Humeur de Facteur for example - despite my reservations as regards Beaupre's work. So let me list a track for you - Speech dub tape activity, a car goes past, a choir swells, a looped synthetic sound swells being gradually hi-passed filtered. Someone coughs, the wind blows, a door squeaks there is a steady drone - which then subsides. Electronics are placed against trees leaves and squeaks and a synthetic choir emerging from the trees leaves, although the transition is not handled well, a door slam followed by some speech (in french) - whilst the same synthetic choir continues to drone in the background. Someone walks along with The Shadows performance of 'Ghost Rider in the Sky' mixed quietly in the background - a bit of feedback and speech, someone walking along again - harder surface this time and so forth.
It is not impossible to assimilate such diverse elements together to cohere into a satisfying whole, as Brume, for example, proved on works such as Standard, but it is something this CD appears incapable or doesn't want to do in its attempt at surrealism.

Some of the tracks on this CD are less list-like, but even here the editing and structure seems less than ideal. Track 6 for example features a saxaphone, playing in a manner very reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's Dance of Fools (featured on their classic, Automating II album), but the tracks 'progression' to a low drone with timpani followed by the saxophones return has little poise and sounds closer to Limpe Fuchs studied primitivism, which isn't a recommendation.

The final track again shows the limitations of Routhier's compositional ability with a reverberant guitar pitched against swelling and falling drones with some delayed activity and the banging of some light metal percussion in a manner lacking the care required to merit the repetition it receives. The whole track is soaked in washes of reverb in a flawed attempt to create atmosphere, a technique which is somewhat clichéd to say the least. I always try to find something positive to say about the CD's I review, but I really am struggling in this instance to find anything to recommend about this release.

Review by crrs
Composer, Philosopher, Office Worker

Philip Jeck - 7
Touch TO57  Total length: 49:49. www.touchmusic.org.uk

7 is compiled from edits of home and concert recordings from the UK, Germany and Belgium using his faithful arsenal of relic turntable, minidisc and keyboards. Jeck's latest release on Touch Records gives the listener an audible experience of William Burrough's prophecy of “cutting into the present to let the future leek out”. The 7 pieces seem to be studies of a single moment, spliced and dissected to set free sounds that only otherwise exist in the invisible world.

Jeck is a master of his own language and the record displays his beautiful understanding of the limitations of his equipment and compositional skills. Like a huge leviathan moving to occupy a small amount of space in a long time, Jeck is developing at his own pace and the pieces contained on 7 are small flags of victory for each small but carefully taken step.

The whole CD is some kind of polar map. Shades against shards of haiku like compositions not competing against each other for space, but offering each other space.

The opening track ‘Wholesome’ slowly lowers the listener into the first space, surrounded by shoals of distant piano repetitions and static messages. This situation is turned on its head with ‘Museum’. A fanfare broken up by tears of a regretful funeral drum. Again Jeck's static rain drenches the piece, and the funeral drum distorts battling and losing to ghostly strings. Ultimately a very beautiful piece.

‘Bush Hum’ made form the amplified hum of a bush? Record player and delay pedal comes across as some kind of avant-krautrock obsessed aborigine splitting atoms with his didgeridoo backed by his children playing violins pleading not to be left alone.

The train station broken heartedness of ‘Now You Can Let Go’ with it's 'Carry On' film horn loop and Hawaiian guitar diverts the flow of the record. The track is divided in its opinion of where it should go. This confusion is diluted by adding additional samples of suburban rumours and a 'Keep On Running' drum loop. This chaotic piece destroys the ground covered previously, but Jeck is retracing his steps, re-looking to see if there are gems in the dirt.

The CD ends with the sublime and gentle ‘Veil'. A composition reflecting hidden moments. The loop of the Gorecki like strings swim under a constant drone and are broken by the appearance of minimal percussion. It sound like shadows of thousands of people all turning their heads at once. In Hebrew, 7 signifies completeness and the complete cycle of things as allowed by God. All 7 pieces here explore and question stillness, they open the moment for the listener, making us more aware of the tiny space we occupy.

Review by Justin Wiggan
Justin Wiggan is a phonic artist who works with Dreams Of Tall Buildings, robotti nu se pot ruga and as Geography of Nowhere.

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