Beneath the covers (styled in jagged water colour tones with sporadic dashes of pure pigment, a
bit unimpressive, not too present or engaging for my visual taste) Kim Cascone recounts of the
multiple possible hearings of drone and the effects thereof. Listening to drone as an acquired talent
that is, according to this statement, before encountering the realm of rich sonic phenomena; “a full
range of qualities and events that were previously inaccessible.” Learning to listen; gradually deeper
exposure and unfolding – it’s not the most crazy of ideas.
However: if there is infinity to be found “hidden beneath a simple surface”, maybe this here
premise is a bit off. Meaning: why hide all this richness when the inferred simplicity belies itself in
a lack of depth on the first place. A deeper touch one needs to be taught to hear to uncover – a
deeper shade of soul that one may tell oneself is there, when it’s actually not. Maybe that is why
non-informed, non-taught people, those without the acquired taste of opened ears that might
get in the way of this heightened appreciation Cascone writes about, don’t hear it, get it, because
it is just not there to begin with? Like the emperor’s clothes?
It is only (possibly musical) sound and if it works, especially the “supernal, a synaesthesia”,
this integration of the senses brought forth by the drone, then it happens and will want to happen,
needs to, cannot help itself: it will not hide; it will consciously and unconsciously pervade
perception(s) and work its ‘magic’ regardless of ears in the way or (un-) trained listening: it will
do away with these notions, altogether. Why hide all this beauty and bliss?
Martijn Comes does away with exactly this part of hide and seek. In his hour long title track
it’s all there, in plain ear shot. Think of a work by the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. From a distance his
sea views may look like a light and a dark block. Upon getting closer to the work, the lower one
opens up to reveal calmly waving water masses. We deduce the top half then must be still air with
occasional thin streaks of clouds. A bit like a drone by Phill Niblock works: on first encounter a
massive wall of sound, unmoving and monumental, but slowly unfolding to open up to micro tonal
shifts and beatings in constant flux. Not on deeper acquired listening, but just because of the
length of the works, upon durational immersion alone. Comes flips this script.
In his 60 minutes track Martijn Comes literally puts the details which would ‘normally’ only
start to get noticed in (due) time above Sugimoto’s horizon line. There’s nothing hidden or to be
found beneath a simple surface here; the simplicity lies in the foundation, the baseline bottom. On
top of that Comes lets his Berliner Schule-like synthesizer and organ tones drift across the canvas
in brash and thick smears. More melodic lines and gentle noises drip as Pollock’s splashes over this
action painting. All colour tones retain their respective purities, don’t mesh and jumble, mix and
blur like in the cover painting. It’s all there, within reach and grasp and aural dissection. On the
table, barely sewn together in a cloud of steady folding and unfolding out in the open.
Now, this 2CD comes with a remix disc. Remixing Christer-Hennix, Niblock or Radigue might
be an ominous task to pick up as the short form will basically do away with the time based
immersion of their works. Also: remixers could focus on details and take a runner with the ‘riches’
in details, which only make complete sense in their totality in complex interplay.
Remix albums also tend to be a bit like sonic window dressing. A way of disguising that, to
quote Tom Waits: “the coffee just wasn’t strong enough to defend itself”. And again: this work
by Comes does away with exactly this critique for it is precisely because of the strength of his
source material being in plain aural view it can be taken up by others to present their own view
without clashing, destroying or masturbation on a limp bizkit. Here the remixers can deliver more
riches from a horn of plenty sounding off loudly to begin with.
Martijn Comes presents a work which might not work especially well as a drone in the standard
notion and connotation thereof, but which bears its sonics on the sleeve to show and tell of
electro-acoustic brilliance and constantly roving ears darting restlessly from point of interest
between dynamic shifts, textural zooming in and out and timbral coloration. From this massive
work Scant Intone can, for example, take monumental church organ drone and weave a symphony
of Leslie cabinet-like shimmerings. Zeno van den Broek reworks the sounds in tape saturation and
decay forcing analogue compressions on the material until the aural elements resemble things
falling apart. Alberto Boccardo amplifies the lack of rest in the source materials to the max, while
Juan Antonio Nieto manages to push the work into the real of industrial GRM-collage.
Picking up the riches on offer and doing a runner… Now there’s a not so crazy idea for a
sublime listening experience, I’d say and Comes plus his remixers deliver the highly entertaining
soundtrack to this game of hide and seek turned upside down and inside out. Even better: once
you’ve heard the remixes, the base work exudes all the more light and wealth of tonal bliss.
(Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg)
Read the original review: http://vitalweekly.net/1075.html