Rhodri Davies' meeting with Annette Krebs in Berlin in April of 2008 relies heavily on a reductionist aesthetic. Their respective sound generators, which include guitar, electric harp, tape, mixing board and various anonymous objects, form a surface wash in which, at least most of the time, everything, from creaks, scrapes, rattles, buzzes, and edgy bowed tones, is held together without homogenizing. This common ground proves fertile, up to a point, owing to the duo's ability to maintain it as a middle-ground where a certain decisiveness, patience, and technical mastery is employed while nonetheless remaining responsive and daring enough to overlook absolute unity in favor of indefiniteness.
It's a music made for minute motions drifting in cold, remote regions, glassy drones pricked by tactile and sharp sonic output, like seaweed snaring gnarled wood; it also seems to continually settle down into its own sonic undergrowth, transforming therein, and then rising silently to take on new, somewhat dramatic forms, forms that, though recognizable, still never fully realize or reveal themselves. Unexpected disclosures come in, moments when the crust fissures or when a segment is suddenly subtly layered for depth and contrast, and in which a clenched tension is more apparent.
This tension is enriching but obviously not essential for the work. As though absorbed in a kind of exercise, the work does occasionally come off as an exercise, the duo seem more engrossed in testing out the process, seeing how far it will go and where its strong and weak points lie. It's messy, uncertain energy thus knows neat forms, engaging progressions and surprising moments when the outside world seems to spill in, but, at this stage of development, this still doesn't stop it from sometimes being scrappily redundant and even dry.
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Max Schaefer 2009-07-12
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