(10.27.06) This World is a collection of two longer pieces by M. Bentley,
owner and architect of The Foundry label. Chronos & Kairos are
an examination of the passage and impact of time upon our bodies and
rhythmic cores, while Import, originally released on the
limited run Fält sublable project invalidObject, is re-released
here as a thematic companion to Chronos & Kairos. Both employ
Bentley’s “kitchen sink” approach to ambient textures: utilizing
every and any sound that he can get a recording of as textural
material for the work.
Chronos & Kairos opens with “Time (fabricated),” the ticking
sound of a mechanical clock (do any of us remember those any more?) as
the beat track for drifting tonal ambience and delicate
micro-squiggles of sound. “Time (retrograde)” picks up an echo, a
diastolic hiccup to the systolic click, and strange streams of
ephemereal sound begin to creep into the foreground like homunculi
that have become lost on the way to a Coil recording session. “Sine
(of the Times)” slips into a world of undulating sine waves, their
rhythmic peak and valley becoming the subtle marker of time’s passage,
while Bentley releases ambient washes at random intervals.
In “Parvane,” the rhythms are even more distant, the infrequent
heartbeat of continental drift. Field recordings of jet engines and
automobiles passing begin to rise in the mix, the suggestion of a
larger world of sound beyond the microcosmic navel-gazing that we’ve
been doing for the previous fifteen minutes. “Kairos (storm)” is
filled with the sound of rain and thunder as the pulsating drift of
sound pulls us through a circadian cycle — day heading into night —
and we end up with “Chronos (night),” a crackling glitch track filled
with the digitally augmented sound of crickets, their nighttime song
turned into a microscopic rhythm pattern.
The passage of time in Chronos & Kairos drifts from precisely
delineated spans to more open-ended flow — the hurried tick-tock of
humanity’s existence becoming the slow meander of infinity. It is no
accident that Bentley references Steward Brand’s book, The Clock of
the Long Now, for his definitions of Chronos and Kairos. The
suite is an ambient expansion of sound, suggesting to the listener a
mental state beyond their petty, brutish lifetime; Bentley wants us to
think beyond the next heartbeat, the next breath, the next weekend
excursion. In Chronos & Kairos, our lives are the small
digital noises — those tiny squirts of sound that intrude upon the
glacial cosmic drift.
Import was written for Fält’s invalidObject project, a
series of fifteen minute releases all titled after the twenty-four
reserved words in Javascript. Bentley’s Import is a fifteen
part experimental symphony that begins with field recordings of water
and the shore, dissolves into twisting ambient tones, shifts into
strident alerts and digitized waterfalls, decays into ambient feedback
rhythms, loops into surreal tone poems, and departs in a haze of
granular arrhythmia. Of course, you can create your own path through
the fifteen tracks — that is the beauty of the arrangement. More
abrasive and abrupt in its transitions than Chronos & Kairos,
Import leaves the listener with a sensation of sampling: both
having been and partaking of. Both suites seek to invoke in the
listener a sonic space outside of their normal range: whether it be
the expansive infinity to be found in the daily cycle of our lives
with Chronos & Kairos or the multi-pathed possibilities of our
surrounding that make up the body of Import. In both cases,
Bentley succeeds admirably.
This World is out now on The Foundry.
