You recognize things, and sometimes you don’t; the same thing one has with the real and the virtual. Quiet and pleasant music, perfect pass time music, the soundtrack for modern living.
Perfect pass time music
The cover of this CD has a short introduction about the ideas behind the music. Something about ‘digital dependencies,’ “our action seems to be dominated by virtual images and content” and that in Bodyfulness they try “to capture the coexistence of physical and virtual life, to talk about about the intimate experience of the body online and offline, to show a subjective, audiovisual study of the impact of modern communication solutions on our intimate relationships.” Say what? It reeks, for me, of mindfulness, also something that I do not have much interest in. Sometimes you wish you didn’t read such things. I know I can’t complain about the lack of information, but knowing that Jacek Doroszenko plays “various electronics, prepared piano, field recordings, sound installation recordings, various analogue synthesizers, keys, bells and strings,” would have been enough as the playing of “skin and body parts, contact mics, synthetic pellets” by Ewa Doroszenko, raises a few questions. And there isn’t an answer anywhere. Is there some kind of live processing going on, I wondered?
Ewa Doroszenko’s work features on two of the nine pieces here, but playing these, I couldn’t detect anything different than the ones by Jacek solo. This is an Audiobulb Records release, which means we are in the world of computer processing, clicks’n cuts, granular synthesis and such. It all has that ambient glitch feeling that music had some twenty years ago, and which may have gone out of fashion a long time ago. Maybe it is about time for a revival? Maybe this is already happening. I am hardly interested in what is in or out of fashion, and I am merely interested in great music—that we find on this CD.
Doroszenko plays some wonderful ambient music, abstract and melodic. They go hand in hand with the ‘real’ instruments; their processed variations and field recordings. Throughout, this is very easygoing music, without a dissonant, a peep or a scratch. If we need to mention the analogue and the digital thing again, this album is a fine example. You recognize things, and sometimes you don’t; the same thing one has with the real and the virtual. Quiet and pleasant music, perfect pass time music, the soundtrack for modern living.
Review by: Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly #1353. Reprinted with permission.
Bodyfulness is available on Audiobulb. [Bandcamp | Release page]
