Compiling all new mixes of Sonogram’s ‘quieter moments,’ Compendium makes for a subtly deep low-light listen.
A subtly deep low-light listen
There’s an area in art—visual, textual or auditory—known as The Uncanny. It may be invoked when something familiar presents in such a way as to engender discomfort or unease. It’s relatively little explored, but it’s fascinated some (notably Freud), and it’ll keep ambushing you, once it’s wormed its way into your mind. This ‘mindworm’ comes up in seeking to convey something of the ambience of Compendium, Todd Gautreau’s latest release under the Sonogram alias. A Sonogram ‘song’ is one revolving round a motif that strikes as kind of familiar, perhaps in its simplicity or everyday-ness, but comes to sound somehow strange through exposition and/or micro-variation or, often, mere repetition—a bit like how a word may estrange itself when repeated to yourself: ‘funnel… funnel…,’ ‘pelmet… pelmet…’ ‘festoons’… … Weird. Listen.
Gautreau is nothing if not prolific, eclectic too, traits reflected in his plurality of projects and releases; most active currently, Tapes and Topographies, the object of a few igloo-’views (see, e.g., Modalities, A Season of Loss), others—Crushed Stars and Tear Ceremony—less visible or inactive, respectively. Sonogram is an earlier project dating back to Heartbeat Submarines, a debut from another millennium, reanimated here for what is, as pointed by its title, a collection of sorts—one of material not new (but for “Light Between Leaves”) but all remade-remodeled. The music realized by Sonogram, commendably, occupies minimal space, in the sense that a piece’s duration tends to be only as long as is warranted by its founding idea, and it deploys slender means to achieve its effect, and affect. A couple of 5-6 min. tracks, one of 8, but between 1 and 4 mins. tends to suffice for an element to unfold over the course of the composition before withdrawing, resisting any excess of extension. Compiling all new mixes of Sonogram’s ‘quieter moments,’ Compendium makes for a subtly deep low-light listen.
Compendium is available on Simulacra [Bandcamp]
