ting ting jahe 18 (16)

Starting off, I'll admit that I was not particularly fond of the use of silence in this release. I've heard other artists use silence as a compositional tool, but in this release I cannot fully tell what the point is. Perhaps there's no point at all, or I've missed it totally, so I must allow a margin of error on my part.

With that aside, I can now concentrate on what I did like very much about this release, which is the use of sound as a force in itself. A lot of artists will use sound as a means to a greater end, so to speak. But here it's as if the sound itself is the focus. I also felt there was a narrative to this music
I could be missing the mark completely here, but I felt like I was traveling through a variety of soundscapes; therefore the music had a very kinetic feel to it. At times, the sounds on this disc reminded me of what I'd hear walking a few blocks through any busy city human voices, transportation, construction a feeling of real everyday movement and human experience. The sounds of our modern world should not be so much a distraction to us, but rather a special sort of music in it's own right. This release definitely touches upon that notion.

Also, I very much liked the use of human voices in tandem with the mechanical, and or sythesized sounds. It gave the work an overall balance for me, and kept the sound from being too cold, too machine-like.

In essence, the music here is not noisy without purpose, which I think a lot of experimental music suffers from these days. I could view the sounds, tones and field recordings on this release as a sonic mirror into a world that we all travel through frequently, but so often fail to listen closely to.

This release also inspired me to pay closer attention to the sounds that we hear in everyday life, and to hear them without judgment. A sound has no color and no form it has only the meaning in which we attribute to it. With that frame of mind, one could view almost any sound as a beautiful and enlightening experience.

All in all, this is a very good release, which got better for me after repeated listens, even if I didn't fully understand or appreciate the silent parts.

-Duane Ferrell
www.elian-music.com