The myriad of ideas is baffling, the collection of found sounds is staggering, and how CRT manages to glue it all together remains a mystery.
Blissfully confusing audio sculptures
Cathode Ray Tube continues to delve outside his comfort zone, four tracks spread over 30-minutes, and we can’t find a moment to breath. The claustrophobic rhythms enacted on these tracks is enough to make your head spin—the myriad of ideas is baffling, the collection of found sounds is staggering, and how CRT manages to glue it all together remains a mystery.
From dilapidated beats and dystopian synths to broken drum machines and industrial/rave layers, there’s such an abundance on display that it’s difficult to pin down where FOREBODING COLOURS is actually headed. But really, is there any reason to have a direction? Isn’t experimental electronics just that? Exploring where sound can go, delving into uncharted spaces, letting ideas loose to form other ideas, and letting them expand and contract. That’s precisely what CRT engages his audience with—a cacophony of strange electronic soundscapes, at times drifting, at times punchy and direct, and all the while, there are foreboding colours we’re dealing with, not to mention the spellbinding artwork that gives it away! The tangled (sonic) hues in CRT’s color spectrum continually bend and twist. Oftentimes sporadic beams of light pierce through fissures only to be refracted and split into hundreds more.
Approach with caution, exit with a sense of bewilderment. At the end of the day, I bet that was the plan all along. These are blissfully confusing audio sculptures to say the least!
FOREBODING COLOURS is available on Condition:Human. [Bandcamp]
