Coin Gutter + Vox Barbara :: Double Review (Objective-Subjective)

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  • Coin Gutter
  • At Play Amidst The Strangeness and Charm
  • CD-EP
  • Vox Barbara
  • “Oh, How the Ghost of You Clings…”
  • CD-EP

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    (03.15.05) Canada’s Objective-Subjective is in the process of releasing a 12-part
    EP series based around Alan Moore’s groundbreaking graphic novel,
    Watchmen. A revolutionary take on the superhero mythology that
    ably deconstructs and reconstructs the very idea of responsibility and
    necessity inherent in the super-human ideal, Moore’s Watchmen
    was filled with death, despair and degradation. The very veil of
    society has been ripped clean off a long time ago in Moore’s world.
    The heroes cling to the last shreds of human possibility, struggling
    to find hope in the decaying world surrounding them.

    Matthew Dixon’s efforts at Objective-Subjective (the label name is
    even a nod to the graphic novel) is to provide an experimental
    soundtrack to the work. The Watchmen Series is 12 EP releases, each
    one beholden to the contents of one of the 12 chapters of the novel
    (which originally ran as a 12-issue maxi series) and each chapter is
    composed by a different artist. The latest releases in the series are
    Chapter III as constructed by Coin Gutter and Chapter X as
    transmogrified by Vox Barbara.

    Chapter III deals with isolation, the first part of the pirate story
    within the story and with Dr. Manhattan’s realization of the mental
    and physical exile forced upon him by his transformation. The
    landscape becomes more surreal, more detached from the ordinary
    reality and, as Coin Gutter’s impression of this chapter progresses,
    the sounds of the streets — the captured voices and radio signals of
    human existence — become subsumed under a growing cloud of
    destructive noise. The titular reference of the EP’s title is written
    on the wall of an abandoned base in Arizona, the old atomic testing
    facility where Dr. Manhattan was last human, and, attached to the same
    bulletin board is a picture of himself before his ascendance into his
    more evolved state. The building is destroyed, everything is bereft
    of human occupation and life, and yet Dr. Manhattan finds a thread to
    his humanity here. Amidst the strangeness and charm. Coin Gutter’s
    work is filled with both characteristics, wails of structured noise
    and fragments of abandoned glitch and fractured vocal samples. Their
    contribution to the series effectively captures the decay of reality
    into chaos and discord. And yet, in the end, the noise of At Play
    Amidst The Strangeness and Charm
    is still organic, still made by
    conscious thought. All that is undone can still be done again.

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    As Vox Barbara, Frank Smith collects sounds and takes them apart,
    finding hidden echoes and strange sonorities that have lain undetected
    within the physical shells. Sourced metallic echoes fill the
    beginning of his single track EP. “Oh, How The Ghost of You
    Clings…”
    is awash with nostalgia, rife with reverberations of
    regret and distress. Hidden in the pipes that run beneath your floors
    are all the gravid decisions you failed to properly realize and, late
    at night, when you are most susceptible to the ghosts of your past,
    the accusing voices of your in-decisions come up through the vents and
    whisper stereophonically in your ears. Smith’s work has always been
    riddled with ghosts, melodies that decay more quickly than they sound,
    cadences that creak like forgotten street rhythms from buried cities
    and slivers of shattered noise that are nothing more than the cut-up
    soundtrack to our personal histories.

    “Oh, How the Ghost of You Clings…” is a reference to a page
    in the supplemental material of Chapter X, to a piece of advertising
    copy for a cosmetics line called “Nostalgia” that is being retired for
    something more aggressive and modern: “Millenium.” Smith’s soundtrack
    is an echo of the old world faced with the new. As Nite Owl and
    Rorschach come to realization that they may no longer have a part in
    the new world order, we are left with a decaying handful of all that
    we know. Vox Barbara is perfectly suited to give voice to the echoes
    of a fading epoch and “Oh, How The Ghost of You Clings…”
    persists in your mind by way of its sibilant whispers and dynamic
    shards of compressed sound. It’s been a few years since the last Vox
    Barbara release and I’m very happy to hear new material from Frank
    Smith.

    At Play Amidst The Strangeness and Charm and “Oh, How the
    Ghost of You Clings…”
    are both out now on Objective-Subjective
    in limited release editions.

  • Objective-Subjective Website
  • Coin Gutter Website
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