- Kymatik – Game is Fictional : 10:37
- Mark Tamea – Planked & Shored : 12:06
Credits: McNaughton/Tamea/Harvey/Taylor
Abstract Electronic / Field Recording.
The first time that two original members of Kymatik had had the opportunity to work together in over a decade.
The source recordings which constitute this piece were made together in Devon U.K. in November 2007 and were then processed by each of us separately. Part One was produced in the U.K. and Part Two in The Netherlands. Mixes were exchanged over the internet as the work progressed.
Part One:
Game is Fictional (Midwitch Cuckoos Rethink) – Kymatik
Part Two:
Planked and Shored – Marka Tamea
This recording is released as part three of the NonServiam Modern Anthropology Series.
A very limited edition CD of only 33 copies, with accompanying artwork on glass and photo insert sleeve, especially designed for this release by NonServiam is unfortunately sold out.
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Review: Landschaft
Kymatik are a collaboration / collective for this project comprising Mr. McNaughton and Marka Tamea, working again together after a break of 10 years or so. Both artists are highly accomplished experimentalists pushing the boundaries of sound sculpture (music is rather a limiting descriptor that I have avoided using for this review).
I sit and listen to The Paignton Anomaly – by candle-light in the late night after the city has fallen silent. The flame connecting me to this complex elemental work, a sublimation of some rare solid into the air.
I ponder the paradox. The work, an evocation of time on the geological scale before culture and the concept of association existed. There is not humour, wit or irony at play here, only a pure distillation of place and time. Postmodernism and referentiality are nowhere to be found and that absence of cultural landmarks bestows on the work a mark of honesty and self-assuredness that defy the conventions of representational art.
The barest of melody acts as a carrier for the edgy glitch work that constellations the two pieces. Raw a-tonal frequencies define a sonic space both complex and economical. The term “minimal” does not quite fit – the sounds are concealed, camouflaged – hiding among each other.
Another listen – appraising from a different perspective. Trying to build a different mental construct, to decode the sonic contours. In a way that a smell can transport one to a sense of time and place. Building associations from experience – by the nature of things, a journey personal to each listener. That is perhaps the way to approach and appreciate this work – each listener will bring their own associations to it. And the sounds will act as catalyst joining and forming the listener-associations, rather than impose a narrative. In this respect, the work is abstract and succeeds on this most rarefied level – it is a tool that makes sense of things. Existential in nature, the listener builds his or her own associations, free from artificial cultural constructs – this work recursively builds upon itself.
- Alan Walker, Landschaft