 |
|
Christopher Bissonnette, "Pitch, Paper & Foil"
It occurred to me today that modular synthesizer albums are a lot like rodeos: it is immediately clear which cowboys are bad at riding broncos and which ones are good, but it is very rare for any of their individual personalities to come through while they are trying not to get bucked.  Despite only recently taking the plunge into modular synthesizer-centric composition with 2014’s Essays in Idleness, Bissonnette is one of the few artists able to transcend the limitations of that analogy.  While Pitch, Paper & Foil is not necessarily one of the best Christopher Bissonnette albums, it does boast a few of his best pieces and there is no question that this is a fruitful direction.  More importantly, Pitch still sounds unmistakably like Christopher Bissonnette, proving that the entropy of electronics is no match for Bissonnette's rigorous focus and control.
It is almost tragic that the opening "Epoch" is such an amazing piece, as it instantly raises expectations that the rest of the album cannot possibly match.  Of course, the trade-off is that I immediately wanted to hear the rest of the album in hopes of proving myself wrong.  In any case, "Epoch" is essentially the logical culmination of Bissonnette's career to date.  He was already an excellent composer and that has not changed.  Now, however, he has taken the lush and dreamlike ambient drone of his early work and used his self-built synthesizer to focus on making the textures and details as rich and vibrant as possible.  In "Epoch," Christopher forms a wonderfully buzzing and oscillating bed of dense drones, while the foreground is a beguiling haze of undulating shimmer and hiss; muted twinkling; and powerfully sizzling, crackling, and sputtering surges.  The balance between structure and unpredictability is perfect, as the piece feels like a massive mysterious presence slowly surfacing in a lovely, sun-dappled lake.  Happily, "Epoch" is not entirely a fluke either, as "The Rate of Delay" scales similar heights much later on the album, albeit in much more subdued fashion, allowing its warm, wobbly thrum and gently breaking analog electronic waves to just drift and ripple along in a beautifully languorous simmer.
The remainder of the album, however, is considerably less engaging, as Bissonnette is a bit less ambitious in his vision.  Speaking charitably, I might say that Pitch, Paper, and Foil is "varied," but it is hard not to be disappointed by a pleasant interlude of amiably twinkling and bubbling analog electronics when I have already experienced a dazzling, immersive, and fully realized soundworld.  For the most part, the other six pieces are basically the audio equivalent of a calm bay or an overgrown field on a breezy day: the scene is quite static in a larger sense, but there is a lot of soothing swaying and rippling happening on a smaller scale.  The execution remains impeccable, of course, but it is simply too gentle and fragile to leave much of an impression on me.
Of course, some pieces are still better than others.  "Keeping Guard," for example, maintains a strong sense of forward motion, an appealingly unpredictable pattern of deep bloops and trebly twinkling, and an escalating undercurrent with some muscle.  I also quite liked "Shuttering Slides," as its otherwise lazy reverie is beautifully embellished by a host of stuttering, fluttering, and undulating textures.  Unfortunately, other pieces like "Surcease," "Dualism," and "Textbooks of the Elite" are basically pastoral squiggles, twinkles, or drones that never fully manage to transcend early New Age territory ("Dualism" and "Surcease" would seem perfectly at home on I Am The Center).  Bissonnette departs from that benignly radiant template a little by leaving in scratches and hiss, but the grittier events on the periphery do nothing to add heft to the main themes.
I suspect that I would have liked Pitch, Paper & Foil a lot more if it had come out five years ago, which is unfortunate.  Or maybe it is wonderful (for me, anyway), as my tastes are considerably more sophisticated and discriminating now.  In any case, I am far too deadened by the constant onslaught of new modular synthesizer albums to enjoy anything that is merely pleasant and well-executed now.  Most of this album falls quite unambiguously into that category, making it a bit of a mixed-bag for me.  However, the good news is that both "Epoch" and "The Rate of Delay" managed to surpass my increasingly unreasonable and unfair standards for this type of fare.  In fact, they are easily two of my favorite Christopher Bissonnette pieces to date, so this recent synth-centric phase of Bissonnette’s career is a looking a lot like a fitfully triumphant creative renaissance.  As such, Pitch continues a very promising evolution, but the culmination of that evolution is not quite here yet.
Samples:
 
