Considering the action coming your way if you take the trip, Seitz Versus Gendreau, at just 90 copies-deep, is an LP you’re going to want to invest in sooner than later. Michael Gendreau, of Crawling With Tarts fame, here indulges in a collaborative found-sound experiment in concrete music compositional strategies. On “Chorus After Rains” he pulls perhaps his most engrossing trick by bringing time to a standstill and letting the achingly beautiful, albeit randomly menacing, subtleties of two separate pieces play off one another. Truly remarkable work, redolent of the casts of Editions RZ and Recollections GRM. Then Gendreau embraces a time-aging philosophy, morphing the plucky notes of a toy piano into a fetid, slow-motion train wreck then cycling into Merznoize before rumbling over the finish line as the track has been rendered a skeleton of its former self. This all takes place in just a few short minutes via “Things Lost That Will Never Be Found,” which resembles a progression of separate movements more than a song. “Trains Will Not Stop (grand surface noise opera Nr.9),” a tune almost as long as its title at 18-odd minutes, lulls you into a coma then pulls you out by the brain handles just before irrevocable damage is done. As with many of the compositions of Side A, “Trains” often intersperses gauzy elements with raw ‘pop’s, evil hisses, and/or foreboding mists. It’s mostly a drift, however, one that might leave you thinking your turntable needle has reached the end of the line. Oh no, my friend; keep listening as the raindrops pitter-patter on the windowpane. A boggy slow-burn after a hectic introduction is just what the MD ordered; while the compositional origins of these tracks reportedly are one and the same, the results couldn’t be more disparate.
More about: Seitz Versus Gendreau
