The visual shape of the SoundCloud stream below is telling for a couple reasons. First, that this is a strange and awesome journey. Second, that Kevin Drumm is involved. Who else would make such rapid-fire dynamic shifts seem so uniformly square yet smooth and pummel the eardrums in controlled bursts before reigning back into the droning hum? Yes, the plateaus of sound you see there are indicative of some definite digitalized Drumm-doings, and surely Mika Vainio (of Pan Sonic pedigree) contributed to sculpting the sonic timeline as well. But what you can’t tell from looking at the stream (or really even listening to it) is that half of the group is comprised of horn players. Axel Dörner has something of a heavy rep gigging around the German jazz community on trumpet, and Lucio Capece is a woodwind player (albeit a woodwind player who amplifies his instruments and twiddles with controlled feedback experimentation).
I dig how it comes together here; the quartet-ness of this foursome is audibly present with distinct textures from each contributor occupying a certain corner of the headphones — left and right (of course), but also front and back to a degree. And if you’re not in a place where you can listen on headphones… well, you should probably move along and come back when you’re serious about absorbing a work from minimal electro-acoustic sound art gurus like this one. Hope that wasn’t rude or anything; it was meant as an invitation. Come on, go grab your headphones and meet me back here so we can geek out over this.
The best part about all of this is that it’s just an excerpt, which means there’s plenty more to enjoy on the new LP from the group. Venexia is available from the German imprint PAN.
• PAN: http://pan-act.com
