John Wall - Computer
editing / composing / manipulation of “original” and sampled sound material etc etc………..
Paul Richardson - Mastering
fixationpoint.co.uk
Alex Rodgers - Voice / Text v02 [ II ]
review by Sunik Kim
John Wall casually lists himself as a sample source here—an act that could be read from multiple, contradictory perspectives. In one sense, especially given the overall trajectory of his work (ever-shorter, more condensed and taut), this could be seen as an even more extreme journey inwards, an act of reflexivity, indicating—from the pessimistic view—a hopeless desire to fix and tweak what has already been released, consumed, and forgotten, and/or a retreat to the ultimate familiar—one’s own work—after being overwhelmed by the delirious cavalcade of possible sample sources that one can freely pluck from the internet in 2021. On the other hand, the act of self-sampling could be read from a different perspective, one of openness, flexibility, even optimism: While the remix or dub certainly often pales in comparison to “the original,” there is a unique, undeniable rush to the successful “version” or “variation,” one that stems from the thrill of recontextualization.
While I’ve previously identified these two pessimistic/optimistic strains in Wall’s work, on “v02 [ II ]” I’m more tangibly sensing the optimistic strand. If his most whittled-down sound was, in Brian Olewnick’s words, that of “a thin plate of copper or zinc, with various bumps, scratches and other ‘imperfections’ arrayed across its softly gleaming surface,” his sound on “v02 [ II ]” is heftier, more brash in its absorption of recognizable club sounds, a steel plate pockmarked with deep gashes and gouges which by no means guarantee safe, replicable passage. In this new sound-world, the chaotic feedbacking and interference of the abstract “synthesizer” adds a disruptive, unpredictable element to Wall’s still meticulously constructed narrative arc; with each compositional shift there is a feeling of risk and the distinct possibility of failure, a system-crashing bug. This push-pull drives the music: We are along for the ride, understanding that this is a discrete, safe, unchanging block of digital audio, while still feeling a bit like everything could crap out on us at any moment.
Here, Wall is advancing his most recent broad-level experiment: He is attempting to inject the rigid, tightly structured and sequenced composition with a paradoxical and technically fictive element of unpredictability and improvisation, striving for a piece that is imbued with the explosive, shocking potential of the best improvisatory modes minus the usual cutting room floor fluff. In the process, the music raises questions about what exactly the boundary even is between composition and improvisation; does the mere act of committing something permanently to tape automatically wrest it from the realm of freedom and chance? This is where the club idiom bears the most fruit, and why I suspect Wall is so drawn to it lately: it constantly asks these questions in its very act of being, blurring those boundaries, at once rendering a casual filter tweak into an irreversible compositional choice and destabilizing and dispersing that choice in an endless sea of remixes, revisions, versions. The music itself reflects the slow and steady progression of this experiment:“v02 [ II ]” moves with a sustained, almost flattened energy that cautiously but confidently ascends, patiently enduring and absorbing failure—until the clouds disperse and the “sunbeams” peek through.
Link to the most recent release by Sunik Kim
www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/sunik-kim-the-bent-bow-must-wait-to-be-released
Catfish spadewalk?
What's the name of that dance?
Crossed big thumbnails
Like horsed chestnuts from the 1970's
Hoods of funghi,fruits in glass beads
Spheres of ovoid hilling
Down to dainty shore in
In...modest....modester
'Eden' the lap o luxury.
Babies on boards in all the orchard
they learn to sing
and you can play them
From another dimension
The 'solace' in the interegnum
Gets all the community going.
Thumbnails akin to
Horse chestnuts from the 1970's
Taut bulbs of plums
The backs of beetles
The rails on the carapace
The bifurcation of the elytron
From where the rubbish wings
burst out.
The birds can fly but they don’t much,
The males, they take to the air
Lattice of taut sticks
and boughs
That flash
Crossing to all eternity.
Thumbs and ropes enmeshed
On your couch
The 'greyscale' and its ends
as they say.....
FLICKER
with hanmandled 'X's
To a soundtrack of
Wheezing in indolence!
'As thick and numberless as the gay motes that people the sunbeams'
Recontextualized and manipulated
sound fragments from
Sv1
A G Cook
IKTS
Pent
Lee Fraser
Tom Mudd
Elias Merino
John Wall
Jennifer Walton
Simon Smith
released May 10, 2021