I8U: b
Bake Records | 047 | CDR
After an impressive solo debut (released last year on Multimedias Pandora), after having collaborated with the likes of David Kristian and Martin Tétrault, and having overwhelmed audiences at the inaugural night at this year’s MUTEK festival in Montréal, sound artist i8u returns with a new disc of dynamic sound environments. Her second solo release sees i8u exploring more rhythm than in her debut. Although these rhythms are often regular and minimal, they are immersed within environments that undergo continuous shifts in timbre and intensity. These new works were made with a combination of field recordings, analogue synths and the Tassman, a powerful soft synth tool developed by Applied Acoustics. Fluid drones come and go, they creep up on you and slowly give way to the next wave of dark ambience, deep synthetic drones and some incredible bass pulses. Higher pitched sounds – hiss, clicks, crackles and shuffling – play on the wings of these darker atmospheres. Consider “Senescence”, with its complex layers of engaging rhythms and hiss; or the subtle changes in “Stasimon”, where a dark undercurrent lays the foundation for an evolving surface of rhythm and texture. Each track folds into the next with natural ease and, though there are breaks between tracks, on the whole listening to this record is like listening to a complete concert; a set of tracks where you could not imagine the absence of any one of its constituent parts or phases. This is an intense and engrossing record that takes over the listening space, revealing new details and subtleties with repeated listening. Highly recommended. [Richard di Santo]