(10.21.07) Dragon’s Eye is the baby of Yann Novak, Seattleite mover and shaker who’s been filling local spaces the last couple of years with a combo of installation art and sound design. Set up as the sound recording arm of his multi-modal operation, Dragon’s Eye is slowly becoming a more established hub to a posse of musical and conceptual kindred spirits, with a growing catalogue of diverse sonographies and esoteric conceptual intrigue. A label that will doubtless draw in not just the usual post-digital label-lovers – be they Raster men, Room40 mates, or Line-dancers,- but might also snare a few followers of the British post-industrial experimental tradition – Tates and Liles, Bradleys and Berrys.
::..:::…..:..::….:::::..:::..:::::::……:::…::.:::….::::..:..:::…::…….::::
Yann Novak :: Intermission (CD-r)
Intermission‘s embryonic life was as part of a Seattle sound installation, “A Sac of Rooms Three Times a Day,” wherein two transparent vinyl houses one inside the other that were inflated and deflated three times a day. It sees the light of day as an edited extract from the deflation section, source sounds being four inflation fans which, after electronic manhandling, end up as if configured into a three-tiered sound perspective – along the lines mapped by film and radio sound designers like Walter Murch and Murray Schafer – of ground, field and figure. The one-hour soundscape presented by Yann Novak has just these three elements: a relatively smooth low-end ground drone, like a long invariant sinetone of minimal oscillation; a field of whooshy cloud-tones – in effect the main active protagonist of the piece – that seem to cycle periodically across the ground, now like waves breaking quietly onto a shore, now like distant deep wheezey whale-lunged breathings; and a figure – present like a kind of non-irritant tinnitus- in the form of a high-end buzz-cum-whistle overtone, initially liminal, but intensifying into a sustained piping. This is essentially all you get for 60 minutes, with perhaps a few tweaks of volume or resonance. There’s no ebb to its flow, until the final ten minutes where the ground is removed to leave field and figure exposed. And, in a sense, what you get is all you need if this kind of field-work at the less conventionally musical end of the spectrum is what floats your drone-boat. Melody is absent, harmony an occasional tentative listener hypothesis. Removed from surrounding context of its conceptualization, its static – vaguely malevolent yet somehow serene – insistence could almost be a louder American cousin of Köner’s glacial sub-drift. In fact at times the overall experience feels like listening to a less rugged version of Monos (esp Generators) or a less interventionist Coleclough.
::..:::…..:..::….:::::..:::..:::::::……:::…::.:::….::::..:..:::…::…….::::
Novak / Drouin :: Auditorium (CD)
Auditorium sees Novak take up his drone bed and walk it on over into a live sound collab with Victoria (BC) artist Jamie Drouin. The two find communion in manipulated field recordings and in an enquiry into space’s definition of, and by, sound. The performance space itself is coopted into compositional resource, with recordings made by Novak of the empty space’s “silence” being cranked up and overlaid to become the monolithic ur-drone that modulates constantly in a kind of vibra-pulse. Over this, Drouin’s interventions take time to come, and when they do, are deliberately intrusive, initially like they’re taking place elsewhere, outside the “mix”; odd pings, deliberately precise beatbox-type thumps, sparse synthetic textures that grow in density to bring out something harmony-like, as well as further foundsound rustles and crackles. As it progresses towards ending the whole textural field becomes an engrossing sputtering drone-wash glitch-scape which eventually fades leaving a carpeted heartbeat. Auditorium slowly constructs itself as one single 48-minute soundslab that develops in a much more composed and arranged fashion than Intermission’s event-free stasis. Austere at the outset, Drouin’s intrusions act as a spattering Pollockian paintdrip to Novak’s big floor-laid white noise canvas. The likes of sonicians as diverse as Eliane Radigue, Richard Chartier, Colin Potter, and Tim Hecker, looking on, would nod approvingly.
::..:::…..:..::….:::::..:::..:::::::……:::…::.:::….::::..:..:::…::…….::::
Tyler Potts :: The Deluge (CD-r)
Apres Auditorium, The Deluge, with Denver’s Tyler Potts making a departure from the music of empty rooms or the sound of deflating plastic houses, deploying instead, somewhat radically, actual musical instruments and synthesizers. After adjustment to the shock, the listener finds a variety of deliberately naive instruments (e.g. xylophone, toy keyboards) are the main protagonists of The Deluge‘s remit of wistful plink-plonktronica, whose wisps of post-Reichian minimalism and winsome demeanor conspire to just about save it from consignment to the graveyard where the myriad “worthy but dull” bedroom fiddlers go, if not to die then to be largely ignored. At times The Deluge has something approaching a faux-ethno slant, with “Through the Ground” and its off-kilter cycling motif recalling some kind of West African guitar figure, further reinforced by a sudden launch into sub-Sahara on “Charting” with its marimba-kalimba polyrhythms. Sound design chops are evident but not flaunted, computer mostly in a background role of mediator rather than prime mover. Minimal knob twiddling then, and more an affair of fibrillating ringtone-esque flutings and soft percussives contributing to a suite of short sound sketches that resonate with ambiguuity, leaving slots to be filled with the chosen emotion by each listener. A surprisingly slight mixture of pop-esque songs embedded in structures that seem primed to receive surly instalments of hermetic microsound but instead veer from melancholy to mischief, from lambent to ludic.
::..:::…..:..::….:::::..:::..:::::::……:::…::.:::….::::..:..:::…::…….::::
All releases are out now on Dragon’s Eye.
