CD – Artek Sounds

Here we find a vocal stuttering, a sort of gibberish where a series of hardly decipherable words are emitted, winning us over. We are talking about “Sermon On Wings And Tergal Lobes”, the first track of “Wormsongs”, a not-easily decipherable album, suspended between lyricisms and noise,micro-minimal drives and refined electronica. The mind thinks thanks to words, oriental philosophy teaches us – in this case the automated emission of random vocalizations helps to break any scheme of ordinary communication, even though the rhythms of religious tunes and spoken-word forms (so dear to a certain avant-garde) survive. Everything seems driven by the vocal automatisms, though certain traditional instruments also peek out, such as piano, violins and various percussion – elements that support the strong musicality of the experience. Eight tracks are presented; we think “Light Code”, (the one with Bart De Vrees working the percussion) is particularly successful, with its free-form envelopes. On the next track, “Set Song”, Anat Spiegel’s beautiful voice is in evidence, very calibrated in its recitative stressing and editing, and part of a very strong, non-conventional, theatrical climax. The album was made using SuperCollider, an environment and programming language for real-time sound synthesis and algorithmic composition, following the idea of lyrical verses, substituted by automatic instruments activated to generate an equal number of “automatisms” of vocal nature.