ACCELERA DECK "Sunstrings"
Scarcelight | SLR 33 | CD | 2004
BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "With Maples Ablaze"
Scarcelight | SLR 21 | CD | 2004
EVOL "Punani Shell"
Scarcelight | SLR 19 | CD | 2004

The "Sunstrings" CD EP clocks in about 50 minutes - more CDEPs like this, please! This time Chris Jeely only employs the guitar, oscillator, and computer. The music was recorded in late 2003, however, the three tracks (plus one hidden) differ much from each other! The over 17 minute long opener, "Dross" is quite a big, and bitter, pill to swallow - it feels like riding over pathless tracts; we clash against lots of stones, patches of grass, and fall into some holes. Thus the track leads us through brushes of guitar feedback, distortion, tweaking, bleeps, noise blasts, abrasive sounds, snippets & junk, white noises. A wide range of Chris' capabilities in generating noise. Oh damn! The second track comes in! Believe me, it's worth digging through the quarter of the hour for your ears to experience catharsis in another long-run opus "Sunstrings"! Beautiful noise that falls down on you like rain - one, massive and sustained torrent of sound! Excellent! Alas, after the first five minutes, the pace slows down and the torrent turns into a stream of modulated sound with tweaked tunes and a little distortion. I hardly noticed the third track in the very first listening sessions - a few seconds of climbing up, and falling down a single sound. To pronounce its title "777" takes not much less time than the track itself lasts! And the final, "hidden" track is a sort of lowercase music, or glitch music in that very obvious way - single bleeps, scratches, whistlings, snippets... With "Sunstrings" Chris Jeely proves his flexible approach to his interests in making music. Continued research brings him more acclaims than bad marks from the reviewers! He is keeping up the good level.

The formula of getting together a few dozen musicians to work on a one-off project reminds Günther Schroth's Six And More. But this is where the parallels end. The head figure behind Birchville Cat Motel, Campbell Kneale, has managed to convince to collaborate over 20 artists from all over the world - Richard Francis, Peter Wright, Ralf Wehowsky, Neil Campbell, Reynols to name but a few... it looks like it was mainly a mail collaboration consisting in delivering sound material to be worked on further. Kneale must have the reasons to feel satisfied with the results! "With Maples Ablaze" brings ten untitled tracks that are put in order to make for a single long composition. A great work it is! A wide range of field recordings melted with subtle electronics, ionising sounds, and gentle humming. Both natural, and artificial sounds dissolve into one universe. A sound carpet of delicate nature shows BCM both as a skilful sound engineer, and as a sensitive artist. This sound work has something of an audio journey, although nothing seems to imply the author had in his mind a concept of making a diary when composing the album. One wonders how big the contribution from particular participants was. Put this record next to Kiyoshi Mizutani, Ytuey...

"Hard-edged Chinchilla Audio" - an intriguing enigma that most of you would like to have solved before your finger pushes the "play" button of your CD player. Would it be hot, and fast rhythms of Kid 606, or latino music inspired Calexico? How about mathematics? Well, the Evol trio - Anna, Roc, and Perkele (if I am not wrong this is Finnish for "fuck") have a strong itch for "nasty mathematics", algorithmic compositions and fractals (which adorn the record cover, by the way). Clinically cold and preciously programmed computer music. Fast in generating twists, algorithmic series of sound waves. Nasty and noisy! 22 minutes at only one track that should be played loud, or not at all, as it fail to work as background music! Well, to be honest, I cannot say "Punani Shell" impressed me in any way. You're likely to achieve a similar effect playing any electro CD, keeping the "fast forward" button pressed all the time! Evol sounds just like that! Sure, there must have been some sound manipulation and tinkering with the speed, and they must have spent some time to program their computers, but for God's sake, why am I feeling a bit duped whenever I listen to this? Evol's records can be found the catalogues of such respectable distro's like Mego, Fals.ch (yes, you can download them!), or Antifrost, so maybe I am wrong?

[krzysztof sadza]