The Vibora label is something of a shifting collective, a chance for underground labels to pool resources and collaborate (financially, if not necessarily artistically) to realise quality CD pressings, the label’s 2019 resurrection realised from two underground collaborations – first a double CD of recordings by Umpio and irr.app.(ext.), and now this meeting of Finnish time/space manipulator Uton with the always intriguing Yoshihiro Kikuchi, who has a penchant for curious collaborative ventures.
‘Invisible Reflections’ is perhaps Yoshihiro’s most immediate collaboration yet, computer creations and melodica colliding with digital electronics from Uton which on opener “The Black Horse Of Mutated Ideas” fractures into a morass of competing analogue and digital particles, its twitching digitalia and resonant acoustic drone effervescing like being shaken in a test tube. The outcome bears too much early ‘00s digital baggage, provoking the same complaints which shook Merzbow’s early steps into laptop creation: a shallowness and predictability in shape, and a gap between risibility and potency which – at least for this luddite – made such work so difficult a proposition. “Spectral Source” and “Multidimensional Relation” strike the same difficulty even if starting from more minimalist places, the former encountering slippery digital intangibility and the latter troublesomely thin melodica manipulation, both seeming to hit technical or technique limits.
But where ‘Invisible Reflections’ achieves is in its stretches of post-Jarl drone, the extended pieces “A Signal For Reflection”, “The Cosmic Unknown” and “Infinite Possibilities” all unclear with where one artist stops and the other begins. These polar excursions find drone materials bouncing off the tundra to be frozen together, strong glares emitting from the icy shimmer and movement slowed to aqueous stammer as electronics, melodica and digital processing are reduced to a sympathetic shiver.
While these tracks all take from the same frozen heart, each travels the veins differently. “The Cosmic Uknown” encounters drips of lysergic acid which start to cycle through the flow at its fingertips, and “A Signal For Reflection” seeping into the ground as a semi-melodic fluidity starts to puddle at the underside of the piece as it melts. “Infinite Possibilities” too starts to separate, but only because competing astral forces start to tear at it: the lulling low-end is surprisingly propulsive, sending the track skimming to the edge of the solar system as it looks back longingly as the slowly fading presence of terrestrial movement, the ghost of Eric Wood grinning from the co-pilot chair – and the brief, ominous swell of sound which occurs as the final seconds of the piece breach the heliosphere are almost terrifying.
The usefulness and limitations of this pair’s chosen instrumentation are what ultimately shape ‘Invisible Reflections’, the lengthy subzero investigations disrupted by difficult shorter pieces which scratch the scabs of computer noise limitations in a way the many whose work has progressed over the last decade do not. The slow marches across the tundra are more visceral, meaningful and memorable, their collaboration more genuine and integrative than the mangle of sound which the other tracks tend to crumple into.
https://uton.bandcamp.com/album/invisible-reflections
‘Invisible Reflections’ is perhaps Yoshihiro’s most immediate collaboration yet, computer creations and melodica colliding with digital electronics from Uton which on opener “The Black Horse Of Mutated Ideas” fractures into a morass of competing analogue and digital particles, its twitching digitalia and resonant acoustic drone effervescing like being shaken in a test tube. The outcome bears too much early ‘00s digital baggage, provoking the same complaints which shook Merzbow’s early steps into laptop creation: a shallowness and predictability in shape, and a gap between risibility and potency which – at least for this luddite – made such work so difficult a proposition. “Spectral Source” and “Multidimensional Relation” strike the same difficulty even if starting from more minimalist places, the former encountering slippery digital intangibility and the latter troublesomely thin melodica manipulation, both seeming to hit technical or technique limits.
But where ‘Invisible Reflections’ achieves is in its stretches of post-Jarl drone, the extended pieces “A Signal For Reflection”, “The Cosmic Unknown” and “Infinite Possibilities” all unclear with where one artist stops and the other begins. These polar excursions find drone materials bouncing off the tundra to be frozen together, strong glares emitting from the icy shimmer and movement slowed to aqueous stammer as electronics, melodica and digital processing are reduced to a sympathetic shiver.
While these tracks all take from the same frozen heart, each travels the veins differently. “The Cosmic Uknown” encounters drips of lysergic acid which start to cycle through the flow at its fingertips, and “A Signal For Reflection” seeping into the ground as a semi-melodic fluidity starts to puddle at the underside of the piece as it melts. “Infinite Possibilities” too starts to separate, but only because competing astral forces start to tear at it: the lulling low-end is surprisingly propulsive, sending the track skimming to the edge of the solar system as it looks back longingly as the slowly fading presence of terrestrial movement, the ghost of Eric Wood grinning from the co-pilot chair – and the brief, ominous swell of sound which occurs as the final seconds of the piece breach the heliosphere are almost terrifying.
The usefulness and limitations of this pair’s chosen instrumentation are what ultimately shape ‘Invisible Reflections’, the lengthy subzero investigations disrupted by difficult shorter pieces which scratch the scabs of computer noise limitations in a way the many whose work has progressed over the last decade do not. The slow marches across the tundra are more visceral, meaningful and memorable, their collaboration more genuine and integrative than the mangle of sound which the other tracks tend to crumple into.
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