"Motion: Movement in Australian Sound"

Like the 23Five label's recent success, Variable Resistance: Ten Hours of Sound from Australia, this new two-disc compilation from Preservation seeks to document a burgeoning sound art/experimental electronic scene among Australian musicians. "Scene," however, may be inappropriate given the variety available here. Motion: Movement in Australian Sound does distinguish itself by veering (slightly) away from headier sound art pieces into a more repeated-listener-friendly zone.Preservation

This is understandable given the label's undistinguished focus, with previous releases including Sun's dazzling, though unabashedly pop debut. The same understated beauty Oren Ambarchi and Chris Townend achieved on that record is present throughout Motion, suggesting there is truly something in Australian water that is sorely missed across the sea. The tensest, busiest tracks here exude a calm that uniquely connects them, digital majority included, to the pastoral. Not the nostalgic, fairytale pastoral championed frequently by European musicians?his sounds of the rural, the sprawling, the Australian pastoral. Inventive and satisfying combinations of organic/primitive sounds with austere glitch landscaping help to create the unique and emotive music so prevalent here. Guitars dominate several tracks, predictably unrecognizable in Oren Ambarchi's weightless contribution, while chiming a struggling joy across Chris Smith's fragile "Plates Shift." A nice surprise on the first disc is Ray Diode's cleverly-titled "Even Diodes Get the Blues," a subtle composition of humming drones, layered hiss, and muffled piano, faded in on a bed of field recordings and clicking static as if wafting in on a phantom frequency. Motion'ssecond disc is the real prize, beginning with Alan Lamb's comatose "Fragment of the Outback," which leads into a beautiful new track from Mush recording artist Clue to Kalo. His "Clock Taps its Face" is simple, skeletal pop, half-spoken vocals over looped piano that succeeds in the kind of haphazard, back porch brilliance that so often falls flat. Laptop/turntable noisemakers GCTTCATT also contribute what sounds like moment of chance-melodicism, a nicely digestible piece composed primarily of one swooning piece of feedback. Scott Horscroft's "Eleven Guitars" is one of the treasures of this second disc, also one of the only tracks to deal, in more explicit fashion, with the comp's vague theme, that each track must explore ideas of motion through sound. "Eleven Guitars" follows minimal, rapid-fire guitar loops as they evolve glacially over the song's six minutes. The tension between the swift, skating motion of the loops themselves, and the miniature progression of the whole, is as peaceful as it is stimulating. The disc's final triumph is an extended closer from Sigma Editions/Tonschacht artist Minit, a patchwork of synth-laced drones and machine hum, understated through a minimalism of means, but immense in its effected catharsis. New listeners should find many agreeable discoveries in Motion, most importantly that of Australian sound itself, a movement that is only getting stronger.

samples:

• Qua - Stranger Comforts Have Slipped By
• GCTTCATT - Jim Denley vs. GCTTCATT
• Minit - Ijmuiden