Hums and crackles are ruptured with blasts of static white noise and distortion. The unexpected nature of their arrival adds considerable impact. Ominous hums build and hover, low-end rumbles like nuclear winds funnel below high-end whistles that nag and prod the aural receptors. Dark, sinister overtones cash deep shadows over the multi-textured noise.
It all happened live in 2011. The two musicians played improvised sets together: the speakers were positioned in a straight line facing the audience, the players separated by a wall, and each playing a stereo setup to create a four-channel concert. ‘Calibrated Contingency’ is a document of that performance, boiled down to stereo.
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It shouldn’t work, but it does. Instead of the two performances colliding into a chaotic cacophony, the result is a piece that is compelling, with the two individual performances melting into one another.
Achim Wollscheid & Bernhard Schreiner Online
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