Unifactor Tapes out of Cleveland, Ohio has released their latest batch of bedlamic modularities and affective noise by Luminous “Diamond Ben” Kudler (Atrium Tapes, Bánh Mì Verlag, Salon), Max Eilbacher (Anòmia, NNA Tapes, Spectrum Spools), and Skin Graft (No Rent Records, SKSK) with album artwork across the board by Brian Blomerth.
The cover for L”DB”A’s Thyme Jones, named for the founder and drummer of Chicago’s Cheer-Accident, shows some rotary dial telephones, a clock, and lines of mathematic equations to place these sounds firmly in the math and science wing. Both sides present abstract facts that baffle with their exploration of time t!me tim3, figures f!gures f!gur3s, shapes shap3s sh^p3s that busy empty planes. An empty white box on a grid. Spontaneous design plows ever onwards. Start no place, and end there. Side B fades into that idea completely, a whited-out mud, fuzzy, strangely orchestral, incoherent, softened as organs reverberate, as those solid grid lines amalgamate to dashed, stippled, fade out, fade back in.
Max Eilbacher might also be on that plane, although, not alone. Side A begins with a female voice announcing, “Modular synthesis processed by a computer” and she returns every now and again to remind us that we are hearing “computer synthesis” and “an arrangement of electronics for live processing.” As Unifactor explains, “The A-side uses programmatic strategies in which Toshi Ichiyanagi’s eponymous score Music For Piano No.7 is used as a tool to generate musical events.” Side B finds Max off the computer and in the world, particularly in transit, as she speaks of “coat hangers in a hotel room,” “a bus station,” and “a piano,” that piano. Similarly, Side B mellows itself into sounds of knocked doors, jangled keys, wooden piano bellies banged, shelves rearranged, grumbling stomachs, wooden sounders scraped, rolling marbles, clacking sticks, night crawlers scampering off through the undergrowth.
Skin Graft’s Peripheral suffuses in grey, gainsboro, light grey, silver, medium grey, dark medium grey, grey, dim grey, davy’s grey, jet, platinum, ash grey, battleship grey, gunmetal, nickel, glaucous, Geomean of 60:1, L*a*b, 18% grey card, Mac, pre-OS X 10.6, absolute whiteness, statics to black, carbon black, super black, vantablack, ebony, charcoal, noir, café noir, black bean, black olive, onyx, jet, black leather jacket, raisin black, eerie black, hurtling towards and back away.
Buy and hear all of the tapes over at their Bandcamp, and stream the second side of “Music for Piano #7” below!
More about: Max Eilbacher, Skin Graft
