"Where the fuck are you?" was the witty title of one of RobertHampson's Touch Ringtones. Main fans could well ask him that veryquestion. Apart from the odd DJing stint and half a 12" from hisdub-beat persona Chasm courtesy of Fat Cat, he seemed to slip quietlyaway for way too long. He hasn't been idle though, and there's a newMain album due on the K-raa-k label in February. In the meantime, feastyour ears on this wonderful collaboration with Janek Schaefer. I wentto hear Philip Jeck and People Like Us play late last year and waspleasantly surprised when half of the unknown quantity on the bill,Comae, turned out to be none other than Mr Hampson and his laptop. TheComae CD, released by Rhiz, displays similar sound organisation tricksto the Main "Firmament" series, but the focus has shifted from guitarsas sound sources to environmental recordings. Mostly these are mergedinto an organic whole where the origins of the sounds are completelyrecontextualised, but occasionally familiar sounds such as rainfall orcrows cawing are hazily apparent. Comae accentuate the electronmicroscope feel of later Main recordings, taking found sound to alienenvironments. After sudden crackle eruptiung from silence, 'Dichroic'descends into revolving worlds within worlds where sound particlesblink in and out of existance over vast cavernous shifts of densedrone-loop. Often there's a deep slow bass pulse as higher pitchedsounds drop in and out and often attain a climactic resolution.Dynamics and relative volumes are broad and the stereo sound field isutilised effectively. The eight tracks merge into one another forming aseamless whole; 'Induration' cuts dead on a deep surging tide of soundas 'Trine' sets off a ringing backdrop for shards of spikey ethernoiseto float on and rapidly sink into without a trace. The first part of'Mere' seems to be the track in which both Robert and Janek let slipwhat they're best known for. It has a classic Main textured loop overwhich vinyl grooves crackle. Then it cuts abruptly with a rapid wave ofnoise and a more abstract second half follows. For a while it sounds asif they've caught a bee in a jar and the entrapped insect keeps rammingthe glass in futile escape attempts, but at the same time an amplifiedclose up of buzz from right under the bees wing echoes. 'Courou' buildsup into a fairly dense track which occupies similar terrain to JanekSchaefer's Fat Cat album "Above Buildings". 'Verglas' opens with somestarry high pitched brain tickles out of which an ever evolving droneemerges, and a strange machine rumbles. This is perhaps the most mindaltering track as the windy drones are subtley rotated from speaker tospeaker. 'Pavane' is haunting and windswept, a distant mutant pianoechoing hesitantly through memory fog as massive iron doors slam. Allis reduced to a dirty brown sludge before a resounding multi-huedclimax rises from the murk, like a slow motion film of a castlecollapsing in reverse. Comae was one of my ten favourite CD's of 2001,and the minute-long samples below really can't begin to do it justice -it has to be heard as a continuous hour long soundscape. - Read More
