Cluett’s voice – still, deceptively small, decidedly not calm – makes much of Objects of Memory veiled and obfuscated, oddly at once soothing and unsettling. The listener disappears in a Bermuda Triangle – of classical minimalism a la Lucier and Niblock, of contemporary laptopiary and installation sound-art.
[Release page] A focus on perception, concern with “the boundary between the auditory and other senses,” engagement with sound’s role in the creation of a sense of place and the experience of time. Classic Line liner notes, this time trailing new boy Seth Cluett, who’s “interested in viewing simple, everyday actions at extreme magnification, acknowledging failure by amplifying impossible tasks, and exploring the role of memory in forms that respect the contract between the composer, performer, and listener.” As you see, the latest addition to the Line catalogue is of archetypal Lineage: minimal (tick), introspective (tick), a certain austere remote beauty (sometimes); in this respect, it resembles previous release in the catalogue, Stephan Mathieu’s Remain, difference here being that, for all its superficial quietude, Objects of Memory is ultimately unquiet of aspect – not so much cosy as edgy.
Cluett’s voice – still, deceptively small, decidedly not calm – makes much of Objects of Memory veiled and obfuscated, oddly at once soothing and unsettling. The listener disappears in a Bermuda Triangle – of classical minimalism a la Lucier and Niblock, of contemporary laptopiary and installation sound-art. “Objects in Stillness” is an opener of hazy spectrality offset by assertive drone-like surge that starts out with a bleak backdrop of unadorned sinetone sustains before ceding to a waft and screech of bassoon/viola/guitar punctuated by percussive flurries. Cluett’s line is a thin red one between near nothingness and oblique portent, as “A Radiance Scored With Shadow” confirms, setting up similar tensions – between aether and earth, denying binaries, tonal-atonal, consonant-dissonant. A paucity of timbres in liminal tintinnabulation: bowed vibraphone and bass drum, amplified paper and compressed air (a conceptual kazoo?); a sonic membrane, as it were, progressively rent – paper strip crepitus, bassdrum thrum and hissing efflatus. Restraint is the word. And tension. For even as sonorities seem to strain towards quasi-crescendo, they’re held back, suspended. “A Murmur Which Redoubles” extends further into the pale and interesting end of minimalism, three guitars and a bass, fragmented, serpentine, in parallel to the electronic plainsong of sinetone. The final pair here are as wilfully elongated as they are even more (conventionally) musically depleted: Cluett shuns musical instruments in favour of reclaimed building materials, steel, baler twine, and speaker cones, light and 12.1-channel audio on “Doleros (Audio Tourism at Ringing Rocks).” Taken from an installation at Brooklyn’s Diapason Gallery, vaguely recalling lowercase luminary, Steve Roden, it’s perhaps the most obscure object of the lot. It unravels in edgy tranquillity, till the slow incursion of a pitched presence three-quarters through ratchets up the suspense while scuffing up a dust of surrounding sub-soundsqualls; discreet percussive elements snagged in a writhing tangle of nocturnal drone-hum collude with a rattling rapture of metals.
“Untitled (Objects Of Memory)” is the end-piece, compounding the growing unheimlich feeling with a near-half-hour live piece of hypnagogue shapeshifting feedback strata that oscillates not so much wildly as it swells and relents tidally. Cluett’s a slippery customer, but he clearly knows what he’s doing with this slow-mo accrual of unalluring dictaphone, sinetone, et al. It highlights again the depth and difference in drone demeanor represented throughout the Line catalogue (cf. Mathieu preceding, Chartier succeeding)
Objects Of Memory is out now on Line. [Release page]
seth cluett – excerpts from creative work from seth cluett on Vimeo.
