g r a i n Essentially, "Grain" is the companion disc to the "Variable Resistance" compilation published by local arts group 23five for an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art about Australian sound art. This album features four artists -- Philip Samartzis, Pimmon, Darrin Verhagen, and David Brown -- who had come to San Francisco to perform in conjunction with a lengthy 'listening room' event of many other artists. Samartzis, who had curated the "Variable Resistance" show, opens this album with a tense collage of post-industrial musique concrete that rummages through terse electrostatic cracklings, mutated calliope melodies, indeterminant creakings, and psychoacoustic drone work that is not unlike the Hafler Trio's best work. Ghostly fluctuations of sound mark Pimmon's contribution as these loops are coupled with miniscule digital vibrations, for one of the most sedate compositions we've heard from Pimmon. Darrin Verhagen (perhaps better known as Shinjuku Filth and Shinjuku Thief) also offers a particularly quiet track of meditative tribal rhythms run through a number of quietly glitchy DSP filters. David Brown (who may in fact be Australia's unsung answer to Keith Rowe) scratches a choral number out of vibrating guitar feedback, dischordant orchestral samples, and nervous electro-acoustic tonal fluctuations. Nice stuff. - Jim Haynes Aquarius Records
				download Microphonics.mp3 (3.0mb)
		Grain is a compilation of four pieces by some of the leading lights of the Australian electronic improvisation scene at the turn of the century. Philip Samartzis' brilliant "Microphonics" is a multi-layered soundscape with oddly placed stops and starts as well as a surprising, in this context, amount of melodic content. It is excerpted from a sound installation that utilizes field recordings from Japanese environments ranging from street vendors to pachinko parlors, structured in a manner that unfolds an a gorgeous, almost cinematic fashion. When, toward the end, a plaintive flute appears over what sound like (but probably aren't) water droplets on a plastic surface, the listener is no longer surprised; instead he or she has surrendered to its inevitability. "Slegner Forgets," by Pimmon, is a luscious treat; rich, softly respiring electronic chords pulsate over a fluttering bed, the general tonality subtly reminiscent of an early, elegiac Gavin Bryars piece perhaps. As opposed to the prior work, it's very much a steady-state kind of piece, one that remains in the same "area," but reveals more and more fascinating detail the closer one listens. There are always two or three more things going on than one initially realizes. The remaining two tracks are a bit less impressive, though not bad at all. Darrin Verhagen's "_frame" is a percussion piece, later electronically processed, that sets a series of loosely rhythmic electronic tones against similar ones in a very low range and static-y clicks above, resulting in a relaxed piece with something of an exotica feel. The disc closes with a ghostly work by David Brown that contrasts buzzing electronics with keening voices in a manner that recalls aspects of Penderecki's early religious works. Overall, Grain is a superb mini-sampler of the advanced electronic work emanating from Australia during this period. Recommended. - Brian Olewnick All Music Guide t r a c k l i s t : 1_   philip samartzis - microphonics     18m50s 2_   pimmon - slegner forgets      3_   darrin verhagen - _frame      4_   david brown - voices of the air shaft