Saturday 13 March 2010

SPOOL ENSEMBLE – LONG DIVISION WITH REMAINDERS EP VERSION 12 (FRONT AND FOLLOW)


SPOOL ENSEMBLE – LONG DIVISION WITH REMAINDERS EP VERSION 12 (FRONT AND FOLLOW)

Spool Ensemble come from North Carolina were they operate in the realms of improvised music.  In the past the group has acted as something of a collective taking in over a dozen musicians to “achieve its aim”.  Currently for this release the ensemble sees Aaron Bachelder and Matt Smith on software and Michael Thomas Jackson on hardware.  Its laboratory stuff.

For this project Spool Ensemble often sound like an old school arcade video machine coupled with a slinky as a storm is whipped up in the exterior.  It is the stuff of juvenile nightmares, threats of energy cuts and being left alone with darken parimeters.  In many ways this is subtly horrific stuff insinuating menace and the moving of mental furniture.

What Spool Ensemble brings to the party is an almost Hitchcock degree of heightened tension.  Indeed their efforts seem to physically lift the pieces/compositions like an orchestra blowing flat out/full on.  The engine motoring this process is not one necessarily fuelled on joy.

As the distinct malfunction continues extended elements of technology emit flawed progress that sonically resemble a droid burning up and fizzing out.  The results sound alien, a language with hidden meaning and feasibly unpleasant thoughts.  I find myself no longer able to take this noise at face value instead reading far too deeply into long game.

A final dose of disorientation closes the EP as the vehicle appears to lose motion and vividly echoes modern failing.  The piece is blunt and difficult to pick at.  Snap.  Put it in the bin.

Thesaurus moment: decline.

Front And Follow

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