CD – The Helen Scarsdale Agency
A crepuscular and minimalist project focused on the effects produced by natural sounds on human beings and on the perception of time and space, here conceived in the precise terms of a ‘hangover experience’, really first drinking, getting intoxicated with alcohol and then ‘passing beyond’ with a meticulous scientific organization in the iterated abuse which makes keeping a degree of active knowledge unbearable in its posthumous effects. Sonorities rich in hums and drones evolving dramatically obscure and combined, mixing up BJ Nilsen’s genius and the ‘asleep’ tones of the duo formed by Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson, worn out by excessive drinking, going along with attitudes which are also oriented towards excess and very eclectic in the sharing of electronic experimentations, carnival punk poses and more contemporary electro-glitch tensions. Elements between art and life which integrate splendidly and with disarming carelessness, operating low frequencies, tonal modulations, field recording, at last confirming the ensemble – even though in a bad way – still capable of exhibiting many ‘moves’ of the microsound repertoire, extreme synthesis of a multiform compositive approach. If in Taoist Kung-Fu we find the ‘drunken’ style, as for the isolationist music we could – now –talk about a programmaticly ‘post-drunken’ style. Limited edition and most elegant rarefied artwork by Jim Haynes, with a picture hand-serigraphied on paper in addition to the characters pressure-stamped on some other precious thin dark brown cardboards.