DL only – Self Released – 15th July 2020
Christopher Nosnibor
Four months on from the original Kressel Studies release, Mick Sussman delivers a second volume of ‘algorithmic studies’ which explore ‘new rhythmic and timbral techniques’ The accompanying text explains that ‘as with the previous volume of Kressel Studies, these pieces are brief and generated from compact nuggets of computer code. But they form a varied procession of musical thoughts, some severe and some almost merry.’
I wrote of the first back in March that Sussman took the listener ‘deep into skittery microtonal bleeping territory’, and this twenty-one track collection of snippety fragments of drones, hums, bleeps and yawning extraneous and quivering noises follows the same experimental trajectory. And as one may reasonably expect, Vol 2 is more of the same, only different – but not very.
‘kr40P1p5’ is a jittery, skittery melange of synths, and ‘kr40P1p5’ is similarly brain-bending, but even more fractured and dizzying, as stunted notes bounce and ricochet every which way in a kind of Brownian motion. ‘Kr42p2p5’ is a swampy soup of straining analogue, while ‘kr42p2p7’ is a fizzing morass of whupping phase and stunning static hiss that’s churned to a spacey foam.
R2D2 bleeps and whistles and retro-futurism clash with short blasts of power-electronics noise, and this is very much a work which is preoccupied with sound rather than sense, conjuring a wibbly-bibbly world of weirdness.
It’s very much a mixed bag of oddities, and if, like its predecessor, it sounds like so much dicking about in the studio, then that’s because it really is, although that’s no criticism. The blurb explains that across the album, ‘some [tracks] veer toward pure noise, like Kr. 42.2.3, while others have a lighter melodic flavor, like Kr. 42.3.1. And some split the difference, with rough-textured grooves, like 44.2.1.’ And perhaps, rather than view this as an album in the conventional sense, it should be held up against the sound effects alums of the 70s and 80s, the likes of which were recorded by the BBC Radiophonic workshop.
With each piece – compositions is a stretch, at least as a musical descriptor: any composition involved is digital coding as Sussman plays with the parameters of programming – so brief, the listener doesn’t get the opportunity to settle, and is instead slapped by a quickfire succession of sonic assaults presented as sketches that flit across the full range of textures and tones, and at a pace that’s sometimes bewildering.
It does work – again, not as an album, but a collection of random sounds and sonic experiments.
AA
Aural Aggravation 