HAZARD / FENNESZ / BIOSPHERE, "LIGHT"

As a taster cum sampler for the current Touch UK tour featuring thesethree audio explorers in cahoots with three different visual artists,this works up an appetite. It's just a shame it's missing Manchester bysuch a distance as the Fennesz track here is particularlymouthwatering. The Viennese maestro has surpassed himself again. Wherehis previous excursions into sampled guitar noise sculpting have maybehad precursors in the shape of Bruce Gilbert's seismic groundshifter'Ab Ovo', the overloaded sensory bombardment of prime My BloodyValentine and the digital lock skips of Oval, Christian Fennesz iscertainly carving out a distinctive niche. This track his perhaps hismost evocative evolution to date and is subtley emotive in a candlelitmemory haze reminiscent atmospherically of Labradford's 'Mi MediaNaranja' peak, but as if the whole album had sped by in a heat hazedfive minute blur. Hazard specialises in bleak ambient drones with snowyclose miked rumbles suggestive of vast deserted frozen expanses.Biosphere seems quite ordinary and inorganic in comparsion, presentingtwo remixes of precise clinical beat politeness underpinning sampledspeech. The cover is another nice bit of Touch co-conspiritor JonWozencroft's conceptual photography. Three images of trees at differentangles and diurnal illumination make apt visual accompaniments for thethree sonic experimenters.

 

samples:

• Hazard - Meteosat
• Fennesz - C-Street
• Biosphere - When I Leave (Finely Tuned Version)