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CRAY, "UNDO"
Having been quite impressed by the MP3 extract of Cray's 'SevenSatellites' that was up here a few weeks ago, I bought a copy of hissecond full length album. A mate of Pimmon, Melbourne resident RossHealy's fascination with the raw whoosh'n'screech of short wave radiois readily apparent in the dissonant abstractions that his hardrive hasspewed onto "Undo".
He likes to let the computer play itself andrandomness plays a large part in the locust chatter of his computermusic, but the influence of early electroacoustic pioneers is alsofelt. Track titles are mostly in the Autechre computer geekspeak mode.However the opening 'mothersboard' not only has two regular words, butcouples crackling dissonance with emotive melody in a way that ought toappeal to anyone who found "Endless Summer" by Fennesz an engaginglisten. Cray likes to let errors remain in the music, but thedistracting sudden split second of silence in the middle of the openingtrack makes this seem a bit shoddier than it might have been. Themelodic ambience buried in swathes of glitch and static screamingcontinues on 'forna', and there's also a suitably oblique but strangelybeautiful CD-ROM video for that track. After that dissonance begins tofill up the tank, although the fractured remains of what could've beena hesitant bass line occasionally peak through the spiralling mists of'usker'. Melody seems to recede further into the background with eachtrack. Environmental recordings form the basis of the Cray soundworld,and 'usker' might feature some aviary chatter, but everything has beenso mashed up it's hard to tell, and for the most part his continualquick sonic stutter could just as easily have been entirely computergenerated. 'mar562001' lays some intermittent slabs of dense noiseagainst a pebbledash backdrop, then the following 'wdd56- broadband'erupts into rapid spurts of splintered floor shaking flotsam whichrecede as a filigree digital tide of harp like runs washes over. By thetime the relatively sparse coda 'rdOblst' hacks drone loops up into adecelerating rotor blade suite, the track titles have become about asabstract as the music. Check out www.bip-hom.com for more soundsamples. -
He likes to let the computer play itself andrandomness plays a large part in the locust chatter of his computermusic, but the influence of early electroacoustic pioneers is alsofelt. Track titles are mostly in the Autechre computer geekspeak mode.However the opening 'mothersboard' not only has two regular words, butcouples crackling dissonance with emotive melody in a way that ought toappeal to anyone who found "Endless Summer" by Fennesz an engaginglisten. Cray likes to let errors remain in the music, but thedistracting sudden split second of silence in the middle of the openingtrack makes this seem a bit shoddier than it might have been. Themelodic ambience buried in swathes of glitch and static screamingcontinues on 'forna', and there's also a suitably oblique but strangelybeautiful CD-ROM video for that track. After that dissonance begins tofill up the tank, although the fractured remains of what could've beena hesitant bass line occasionally peak through the spiralling mists of'usker'. Melody seems to recede further into the background with eachtrack. Environmental recordings form the basis of the Cray soundworld,and 'usker' might feature some aviary chatter, but everything has beenso mashed up it's hard to tell, and for the most part his continualquick sonic stutter could just as easily have been entirely computergenerated. 'mar562001' lays some intermittent slabs of dense noiseagainst a pebbledash backdrop, then the following 'wdd56- broadband'erupts into rapid spurts of splintered floor shaking flotsam whichrecede as a filigree digital tide of harp like runs washes over. By thetime the relatively sparse coda 'rdOblst' hacks drone loops up into adecelerating rotor blade suite, the track titles have become about asabstract as the music. Check out www.bip-hom.com for more soundsamples. -
