A new rider on its aftershock wave, navigating borders between concrète-fabricated retro-fit experimentalism and newer ambient noise and electroacoustic improv, this Swiss pitch-shifter nicks shticks from forebears and harnesses them to current compositional structures, and more expansive drone templates.
Membership of a collective sprung from the ashes of Pierre Schaeffer’s notorious Groupe—whose evolution the inquiring reader can trace here, might presage some forbidding sound slab crawling with concrète nasties. But Kassel Jaeger’s Deltas is not quite all you’d expect from one of GRM’s sons of pioneers. A new rider on its aftershock wave, navigating borders between concrète-fabricated retro-fit experimentalism and newer ambient noise and electroacoustic improv, this Swiss pitch-shifter nicks shticks from forebears and harnesses them to current compositional structures, and more expansive drone templates with a dynamic sensibility that builds slowly then springs into sudden edit frenzies and stereo pyrotechnics, rendering each sound slice at once individual and integral.
Opener “Campo Del Cielo” is formed of processed field recordings from the eponymous area—a large meteor crater in N. Argentina, electromagnetic capture of meteorite resonances from the site, sounds of rocks, gravel, and pebbles processed free from geology to more beautiful acousmatic life, heuristic manipulations pitched against a particulate backdrop. The opening “Aerolite (flying stone)” is at once cosmic and chilly, bringing buzz and vibration in shifting tempo and pitch. Then “Baetylus (sacred stone)” spools out a linear drone replete with bleeping waves as if of scientific device, a gravel ocean with mercurial tides of static. A drone by any other name, but less inclined to Dark Ambient doom-drift than to the treatments of a Hafler Trio, recurring breaths blowing through into arcane atmospheres. The title track layers low end with sonic detritus from a frequency beyond, pure waveform strands fraying into threads of granular noise, birdsong-like synthetics mixed with sundry electroacoustic ambience. A din of bells and crickets swirls through a fog of unknowing, a murk irrupted by guitar treatments—touched perhaps by the hand of Mego-to ex-Main man, Robert Hampson, who masters the album, the delta described in a gradual sonic arcing out into a settling density. It occurs that it may be programmatic: Deltas, a metaphor for an hommage to the history of old experimental sound formation, a symbol of a spreading through time, while keeping grounded, into contemporary vibrant forms. The final “A Guest + A Host,” made with sounds from the legendary Coupigny Modular Synth, is articulated into three parts: electricity + crystals = spectrum, whose chromatic resonances are harnessed to a creepy creation named after Duchamp’s wordplay. A prevalent grain strain remains in the second act, a piercing siren of Circean circuitry restraining motions toward melodic exit strategy. The third sees harshness mellow a moment into fractals, somewhat random, clinical, long aerial sustains like electromagnetic pulses, till entropy returns, oscillating wildly with clicks and taps. Promptings of warmth come near the end, signalling hope (or is it resignation?)—a trace of humanity evoked before being swept away with the grit into spits.
With Deltas Kassel Jaeger locates himself in a presenting past, future-basing. The slow sweep of forms from ground to field to figure offers as vibrant a ride as in any Ferrari (Luc! a GRM founder). It harks back, in thrall to the emergent tape experiments of the 60s and 70s, capturing its rough energies, while feeding forward to Now-voyaging noise, drone, and phonography.
Deltas is available on Editions MEGO [Release page]
