Impossible Shapes
Chris Meloche
Meloche- electronics
English Electric Records, CSA 302
I can’t get excited about the first couple of tracks here. They seem to reinforce the stereotype that current electronic music is cold, unfeeling and uninvolving. I’m glad I kept going, though. “Endgame (for Morton Feldman)” offers something novel. Maybe it’s because I’m a Feldman aficionado. Like that composer’s works it gives a sense of time stopped but still moving, stasis in motion. Listening to this cut is the musical equivalent to watching subatomic particles slowly dance in some parallel dimension. “Half Arcane” seems to actualize its subtitle: “Netherworld Soundscape.” Here the sound of distorted alphorns (that’s right), slapping noises and various alienating effects put the listener in a world that’s acoustically neither here nor there, the alphorns throbbing resonantly like sound beacons marking an unfindable place. This Canadian composer is one to pay attention to.
Richard Grooms