You can relax and let this work simply rumble past you or focus in closely on seemingly infinite details teased out with patient audio engineering.
Ambience with teeth
A complicated, deceptively unfocused-seeming work, Scordatura (described as a tuning of a stringed instrument to effect a very different sound output than that which was intended for the instrument) is a journey through what could be called everything but ambience.
Most of the sample sources on Scordatura are, probably, strings, drums, pianos and other fairly conventional instruments—but the overall vibe is more that of Steve Reich and Autechre. The audio works are long and paint broad strokes with layers of clattering, shuffling, seemingly off-kilter rhythms that fall together, resolving into elaborate, repeating rhythms. The overall mood is a hazy, summertime vibe, or really any time of day when the sun is shining directly into your eyes. You can relax and let this work simply rumble past you or focus in closely on seemingly infinite details teased out with patient audio engineering.
Overall I found it very satisfying as a refugee of the great ambient deluge that is 2020—or I think as the Black Dog called it Ambience with teeth?
Update January 2022 :: Scordatura re-released (Bandcamp link here) is “a slight re-imagining of some of the songs from the original album, with sidetracking in altogether different directions and others transforming from a blurred and dreamy abstraction of an initial idea (“The Huntsman,” “Vows II”) into perhaps more conventionally structured pieces.” ~Tim Koch
Scordatura is available on Bandcamp. Available on cassette, CD, Digital, and 8-track cartridge.
