(May 2009) Oakland-based sound artist Tana Sprague is Lissom. Behind the slinky pseudonym, she fashions Nest of Iterations, from a palette of sources – field-found, acoustic, synthetic; a mesh of recursive shapes and forms, patterns and processes, at once delicate and hefty, hermetic and engaging, con- and dis-sonant. Inspired by “the elegant complexity of organic forms,” the cover’s hive image offers a visual metaphor of its musical contents, an analogous enveloping intricacy being synthesized through deployment of a variety of electronic and digital strategies. Avowedly fixated with micro details, Sprague’s mission – to “manipulate awareness of time, space, place, and scale” – is achieved through the eponymous (re-)iterations. Like with the tape-loops of Riley and the phase-shift of Reich, it’s all about variation within repetition, micro-shift within sustain. Sprague is an advocate of a creed of simple ideas rendered complex through process – whether stochastic or deterministic. The result is a stratified space the listener can navigate, customizing focus from centre to periphery, macro to micro. With credentials both academic (studies in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts) and professional (Assistant Director of RML, SF), Lissom’s no sound design slouch. Insidiously alluring surface structures are rent by strange streaks or suffer slippage – to teeming undertow, dissonant dives. Billows of hiss, tintinnabulations, and rumble wreathed in shadow and whispers tell the tale of “Fallow;” while “Forage” is forged with deep drones and crepitations, a scrim of antique vinyl and arcane reverberations, After these stifling dense tableaux, “Billow” and “Stark” open up to a wider horizon, more of the air and aether, finding felicitous encounter between ambient eras: a dose of Eno’s, a nightclass at the 12k school of Mssrs Deupree and Chartier, maybe a trip down the Köner shop.
On the Other Side… (for L. Cohen) may seem, conceptually, a distinctly unpromising experiment by Edmonton-based tonesmith Gary James Joynes, aka Clinker; the bass tones of Leonard Cohen’s voice hardly seem an inspirational departure point for ambient drone experiment. But once Joynes gets down and deconstructive with analog synthesis, digi-dusting, and a touch of his own voice, any qualms are dispelled as an oneiric suite emerges. Clinker’s manifesto is one of “meditative spaces and the kinesthetic and synesthetic effects of sound,” and, having initially established a serene and euphonic dronosphere, he articulates it in terms of a 42-minute tract, drawing out the smoky lows of Cohen in an evacuated space, then lacing them his own wispy highs. Cohen’s voice, suspended between mantra and Gregorian chant, seeps back through, cracked, distended, bled into by Mr Joynes’ altered states. A slow transmutation is effected, first into subtle dissonance, then on to a dramatic closure of thickening timbres stretching toward shimmering shivering uplift. Cover art again reflects musical meaning potential, Cohen’s physog abstracted beyond recognition, evoking his struggle with light and dark. Joynes works with Cohen’s voice, a nocturnal hum maneuvered into sweeping movements; gradually emancipated from Cohenic attachments, it enters into a spooked drone zone redolent of NWW’s Salt Marie Celeste. All in all, Clinker joins Lissom to form a doublet of finely wrought dronescapes to further cement the Dragon’s Eye reputation for quality experimental electronics.
Nest of Iterations + Clinker and On the Other Side…(for L. Cohen) are both out now on Dragon’s Eye.
