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Bionulor, "Vexations"
Polish artist Sebastian Banaszczyk once again demonstrates another leap in compositional development with his Bionulor project. This work, a 3" CD constructed from sounds extracted from Erik Satie's piece of the same name, features some noticeable elements from the original piece. As a whole, however, it has a sound that is unquestionably the work of Banaszczyk.
Broken into seven smaller segments that roughly follow the evolution of the overall piece, Sebastian maintains an overall lighter and sparser sound compared to his earlier works.The first two pieces, VEX.01 and VEX.02 are kept quiet, with a rhythmic surge of sound, never too loud or dense.On the former, Banaszczyk quickens the pace and eventually blends in some odd creaking-like dissonant noises that drop away into the second piece."VEX.02" sees him keeping the tonal swells but with the addition of an infrequent tweeting and high pitched ringing noise towards its conclusion.
The transition to "VEX.03" is more dramatic, with the tones replaced by some low, bass heavy pulses and an occasional fragment of what almost sounds like a traditional keyboard.Textures that seem to be culled from digital interference (likely from a cell phone and computer hard drive) make for texture, paired with the almost-melodic keyboard passages.Banaszczyk keeps these elements in "VEX.04", but here things are kept a bit more quiet, and the overall composition feels lighter and looser compared to the more rigidly academic styles that preceded it.
The final three pieces are shorter and somewhat simpler in their composition."VEX.05" has the same loose feel as before, but sounding like it is made up more of reversed tones from the first piece."VEX.06" has him heavily using the interference noise from before, with an odd clicking sound that at first made me think my headphones had become physically damaged, and the final segment is the most boisterous, with heavy electronic tones and sounds resulting in a less than subtle sound.
Banaszczyk's approach of "sound recycling" could easily result in a mass of formless, distorted noise that could be culled from any source, but his focus on composition and structure prevents that from being an issue.Instead, Vexations has him presenting a clear sense of thematic structure and organization, reverently recalling Satie's source work while still making it very much a Bionulor work.
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