15 years of collection of experimental electronic antics and curios computed, Line moves on with two, fresh, if not new, works from Hamburg electronicist, Asmus Tietchens, and NY-based installationist, Richard Garet.
Ornamente (zwischen Null und Eins) is one of the more recondite works in venerable experimental electronic music maven Asmus Tietchens‘ long Line-age. Far from the sampling experiments and erratic mechanics of early years, it’s a liminal lull of forms quietly stormed by viscid noise fragments, riven with glitch irruptions. Building from a synth-y swell “Ornamente 1” is bent and stretched into atonal passages redolent of deleted data drifting in the void. More liminal, “Ornamente 2” has sonic particles plink, clink, and kerplunk in a shrunken noise-fest of microtone quirks teased out to traverse space in eerie ellipses. In a similar vein, though more spectral, “Ornamente 3” releases aether sounds to wisp out into miasmata of light-infused dust. “Ornamente 4” stays near silent, glitch-click ghosts flitting across the sound stage, strange resonances tweaked into a weird world of ambiguous tone float and liquid metal tints. Last and most expansive, “Ornamente 5” finds a melodic arc traced through the stillness attended by a more pronounced low-end pressure. Overall, an affair of alien tones and lowlight dynamics played out in a hermetic micro-cosmos with a sense of aperture to new musical dimensions. Cover image—stylized mathematical notation, text—a German excerpt by misanthrope philosopher Emil Cioran from a withering critique of French culture and high gastronomy—is equally cryptic. Underlying concept or deeper themes are otherwise errant, though the imaginative listener may find much between [0] and [1] to fuel transport and intrigue.
Meta is an installation by NY-based multimedia artist Richard Garet comprising four transducers arranged in a 6′ square whose vibrations judder through a wall to be attended to via the surface and the impressed ear itself. The act involves a metaphorical translation, as the listener actively focuses on the edge of a given space rather than a central sounding object, inverting our cognition’s automatic hierarchizing tendency. An hour of alien textures—sundry hums and buzzes and intricate patterns across the sonic spectrum—is captured for an audio sculpture addressed to perceptual neglect. Inarticulate sound is given voice, background foregrounded, in its distillation of a lowercase aesthetic (cf. Ashley to Feldman, Ferrari to Gunter, Roden to Chartier) wherein detail abounds in low volume and gently massed textures. Amplifying and abstracting background noise, Garet homes in on particular resonant frequencies, working sources into a teeming hush, re-scoping the sheen of surfaces into a slow-mo jumble with drawn out passages of stark stillness. The chirp of data-driven devices, ventilator drone, electronic hum and metallic crepitus, the hushed thrum of the urban landscape and its remote echoes are all folded into a tonemass defying peripheralization. Garet seems to configure these sound, making Meta morph to achieve an ebb-flow of bleak lacunae ceding to squalls of teeming fervency. Through this, Garet targets the ostensibly dull ambience of our environs, bringing us closer to our quotidian soundtrack, rendering it grand and orchestral.
Ornamente (zwischen Null und Eins) and Meta are available on Line (line_073 | line_072)
