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Marcus Schmickler with Hayden Chisholm, "Amazing Daze"
The Phill Niblock dedication on the first track's title is a dead giveaway to this album's sound and method of production; solo instruments processed into sheets of static tones that are held indefinitely. Schmickler and Chrisholm succeed in turning out two good tracks in that tradition, but the appeal of this album will certainly be limited by its self conscious austerity.
Despite the well worn methods here, there are some subtle touches that add individualty, the bagpipe playing on title track being the most prominent. To create a indefinitely long, continuous note from a wind or reed instrument, the player's breathing is often edited out of the mix when the sound is processed. Chisholm's breathing has been left in, even though gaps between the individual notes have been removed. His exhalations billow and sputter over the thick reedy tone of the bagpipe. The incoming air swirls and expands through a cavernous space, punctuating the gradual fluctuations in the bagpipe's pitch.
The second track, "Infinity in the Shape of a Poodle (For Björk Gudmundsdottir)", has a thinner construction, working by subtraction rather than addition. The source here is a Japanese mouth organ called a sho. The tone at the beginning is high but still full bodied. From there, it is gradually whittled down till only the barest overtones are left as a ghost image of the instrument. If I didn't know the source here was an accoustic insturment, I would have thought it was completely artificial. The frequencies would be ear-piercing if the change had not been so measured. The result is a clean metallic shimmer that buzzes like the haphazard offspring of a neon light and a cicada.
Although Amazing Daze is not completely redundant, there is more than a passing resemblance here to the work of pioneers like Niblock and Barry Truax. This is not a crictisim of Scmickler and Chisholm's abilities, but at the rigid methodolgy they use. Any music, no matter how eclectic and baroque, will drone given the proper amount of time stretching and filtering. Dyamics add individuality to the music, so music with limited dyamics will necessarily sound somewhat alike. Amazing Daze is not a carbon copy of past works, but it is nowhere near as groundbreaking as original experiments in massed tone music. Three, almost four, decades worth of music in the style have insured that. Despite the good effort, Amazing Daze comes out like a new version of vannila ice cream. It satisfies those who are looking for that kind of flavor, but not those looking for any extra ingredients.
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