Dusted Reviews
Artist: Ezekiel Honig Album: Scattered Practices Label: Microcosm Music Review date: Nov. 22, 2006 |
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Microcosm Music's logo has more color and shapes than Kompakt's singular dot, but it is nearly as iconic in its elegant shorthand: crisp and linear, it features a small metropolis crammed inside of a cardboard box ready for freight shipping or living room assembly. It is the picture of media. No surprise, then, to discover that Germany's premiere minimalist repository is also one of MM's distributors. In fact, the fuzzy incandescence and stealth activity of Ezekiel Honig's Scattered Practices is a suitable score for the tired calm that follows melted eardrums and sore muscles caused by too many hours of 4/4 chug. Its 10 tracks drift to a faint cardiac throb that often recycles rippling timbres and shivering strands of glitch. Grooves are found and disintegrated. Sheared of peaks and dips, Scattered Practices hums along like the fuzzy murmur of a tireless CPU.
The tinkling patter of random clicks and trimmed, sputtering tips of rhythm pop out from the album's carbonated silence. There are loops of field recorded voices that crackle like other "Homemade Debris," as the album's nine-minute plus centerpiece is titled, such as jingling pocket jangle, creaking floors, rattling aerosol cans and swishing drawers. Splashes of aquatic distortion shimmer in the distance, notably on opener "Going Sailing Refrain 1" and its subsequent sequels, but the most salient melodic presence is found in a purring fog that continually drizzles somber chords over the twinkling currents of crunched pixels. That said, Scattered Practices does not have the feel of tampered data but the lived-in texture of a still warm, just worn t-shirt.
By Bernardo Rondeau
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View all articles by Bernardo Rondeau