Meteorological Avant-Transmissions, Intercepted From Air

Comments (0) By Don Allred Tuesday, Jul 27 2004

Avantricity's freebirds (Matmos, Autechre, Fennesz, many more) ride the soundtrack of David Toop's new book, Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory. Right channel clusters, left one cloisters, then they hook up, passing through each other. In time as well as space, when (b) connects with (a) and (x). Disc 2 is mostly ghostly instruments; Disc 1 is everything. For inst., the singing fry and fray of Alvin Lucier's "Sferics." ("Natural radio-frequency emissions in the ionosphere, radiated from nearby or distant lightning," Toop notes.)

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Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory
Staubgold

Luc Ferrari
Les Anecdotiques
Sub Rosa

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One Weatherbird's ambushed by street sounds, but they're countered by visionary description; violence gets safely aestheticized. The artist as museum guard? Where is she later, when I hear a shovel blade in oily gravel, too near a hypnotic/hypnotized-sounding muezzin?

On Luc Ferrari's Les Anecdotiques,voices are talking, frequently in female and French, beware. (American's also spoken, in Chicago and "dancehall Texas.") Often near bird-bordered beaches, while engines drive up and away. Eventually, doors slam and then beat on—doors of a sea tunnel, turns out. Anecdotal, yas: L.A. swings, as Ferrari intends, in and out of meaning, like a pendulum do. Worth hearing, at least once. Go listen to your pillow and be glad.