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cracking the surface cracking the surface
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reviews “The recordings here, made, impressively, in real time, work at a level of complexity and mutability that almost defies deciphermentte opposing pieces, but it works wonderful.” —Chris Cutler RéR Megacorp Featuring the late and great instrument builder and musician, Tom Nunn’s, skatchbox and skatchplatter, alongside prepared and regular piano, a buchla modular synthesiser and live sampling. Wholly organic and initially acoustic, skatch sounds are imbued with life and character but are virtually impossible to place. The Skatchbox is essentially an empty computer keyboard box with objects such as combs, washers, sandpaper, toothpicks and metal wires glued to its surface, while the Skatchplatter variant is built on a circular piece of cardboard that’s mounted on a turntable. All the Skatch instruments are played with modified combs and are amplified using simple piezos. While that might sound a bit ‘so what’, the sonic palette created is staggeringly wide, invoking voices, instruments and electronic sounds, as well as just being thoroughly enigmatic. The recordings here, made, impressively, in real time, work at a level of complexity and mutability that almost defies decipherment; so that, as well as being (for some, not all) a source of constant surprise and pleasure, this record also functions as a kind of brain-exercise, since things change so fast and on several parallel levels simultaneously that, if you focus closely you can find extraordinary details and micro-structures. At the same time it all still makes sense at the macro scale of normal attention, though the speed of mutation and variation is boggling. There’s real structural depth; no repetition, no settling into a groove, nothing obvious, but everything is in constant motion and there’s never any fat, or pedaling or waiting for the next idea. Track 3 is truly impressive – only the penultimate track showing any slight dip in focus. I’m sure this speaks to a specialised taste, but it’s still an exemplary release, not least because these sounds are organic and mechanical and played interactively by people in real time and with a high level of musical sensitivity. —Chris Cutler |