Sometimes I think Myers becomes a man machine; a man with machines and a man acting like a machine, one release after another. Sometimes the differences aren’t significant, and sometimes they are. ‘Terrenus’ is described by the label as ‘earth music’, in contrast to a lot of electronic music being ‘space music’. I couldn’t say if the nine pieces on this new album are ‘earthy’; what would define this as such, I wonder. David Lee Myers continues to explore the nature of feedback music; music in which the output becomes the input and, via all sorts of controls, that sound is processed over and over, and the result becomes the composition. Myers has a long career in doing this kind of music and has mastered the technology very well. This always results in thoughtful, intense music. Minimalism is never far away, and noise is. That may sound like a surprise, because for many, feedback equals noise, but not for Myers. Granted, to the untrained ear, this is alien music, but to my trained Myers-ears, these are the most delicate pieces of music. Slowly evolving, minimally changing, small shards of rhythm, traces of loops and with a very ambient feeling, yet not always easy listening music, there’s too much tension beneath the waves for that. Solid stuff, and as such, perhaps not much of a surprise, but not every work can be a classic masterpiece. (FdW)
Only yesterday, I expended considerable contemplation – and verbiage – on the matter of press releases, and the level of detail they contain nowadays compared to the old A4 1-sheet – which sometimes contained just a few lines under the heading and the logo. It’s wasn’t really a complaint, as much as an observation, although there is, sometimes at least, a sense that most of the reviewer’s job has been done for them in advance.
However, there are other ways in which the detailed press release can prove to be a double-edged sword, and this is one of them. And so it is that I’m plunging into unknown territory with this release. Not in that I haven’t spent many hours immersed in ambient recordings, and not that I’m unaccustomed to postmodernism, in theory and its application, how it applies to the world as we experience it. But sometimes, a work is so inspired and invested in something specific, specialised, and conceptually-focused that it feels like I’m not fully qualified to approach it, much less critique it.
Before I do dive in, this is the context. Are you sitting comfortably?
At the end of the 1990s, Hakim Bey wrote a book about the then-emerging possibility of the virtual. With the lucidity for which he is known, he recognized at the time that the virtual was nothing more than a new avenue for the expansion of capitalism. He introduced the concept of temporary autonomous zones as a kind of Foucauldian heterotopia — spaces that existed only for as long as they could evade capture. Today’s reality reflects a radical intensification of what Bey was referring to in the 1990s. Temporalities have changed completely. We are now almost overwhelmed by an incessant pursuit of instantaneity, accompanied by the mounting impatience it inevitably breeds.
The temporalities of sound, therefore, are naturally different too.
Time must be disobeyed.
The sounds of our autonomous zones aim to be the opposite of what technology offers us today: fascination and dazzle through excess — more buttons, more effects, louder… AI. These are bare sounds, defiantly rejecting the paraphernalia that surrounds them. They are simple yet perhaps carry the greatest complexity of all: turning their backs on spectacle and presenting themselves as they are: unmasked.
This work is the outcome of a series of studio sessions recorded during the summer and autumn of 2024. We followed an exploratory approach grounded in clearly defined premises and a pre-conceived compositional outline shaped by three key notions that are central to us: repetition, silence, and duration.
There is no post-production manipulation. What you hear is what was played. Inactual by conviction, this represents an utterly contemporary mode of being. These are sounds that seek to endure as a resistant, autonomous possibility — even if only fleetingly. Suspended between silences. Those marvelous, singular, sounds that Cage taught us to hear. They are there to last for as long as they can.
The title Horizons of Suspended Zones is inspired by a book from Hakin Bey.
I find that I’m sitting rather less comfortably now than I was a few minutes ago. I’ve never read a word by Hakim Bay. I’m aware of him and his work, but have never got as far as investigating. Therefore, I’m deficient. And so, in my head-swimming uncertainty, bewilderment and state of flaking confidence, I arrive at this fifty-five minute articulation of time-challenging theory/practice feeling weak, overwhelmed. Where do I even begin? Can I relate it to my own lived experience?
I struggle, because it doesn’t communicate that postmodern overlapping and disruption of the time / space continuum in a way that I can relate. For me, cut-ups and collage works convey how I experience life: the eternal babble of chatter and time experienced in terms of simultaneity rather than in linear terms.
‘Zone One [stay]’ is a drifting, abstract, ethereal ambient work, and while over ten and a half minutes in duration, the time simply evaporates. It drifts into ‘Zone Out [unfamiliarly cosy]’, which is appropriately titled, and I find that I do as instructed, as the slow chimes and resonant tones hover in the air like bated breath. There’s a sense of suspense, that something will happen… but of course, it doesn’t.
For all of the detail around the concept, there’s very little around the construction by comparison. But perhaps a bell chime is simply a bell chime and an echo simply an echo. But those echoes matter. I find myself wading through the echoes of time, how it passes, how we lose time. How did we get to August? How did we – my friends and I – get so old? How, how, how is the world so utterly fucked up right now?
Each extended abstraction turns into the next, and so ‘Zone Zero [nameless]’ arrives unushered, unannounced, and unnoticed. There are whispers, the sound of the wind through rushes, and there’s something dark in the atmosphere. It’s only on returning to this after some time to reflect that I come to note the squared brackets in the titles. It’s an unusual application of this punctuation, which is more commonly found in academic work, and which I assume isn’t accidental – but why?
Anyone who’s read Beckett will know how painful and challenging, and, above all, how his work can be, and so ‘Zone Lessness [with Beckett]’ certainly reflects the emptiness of many of Becket’s works – the sprawling nothing where there are no events, no… nothing, and how life itself bypasses us as we wait. Life, indeed, it what happens while we’re making plans. It has a painful habit of passing us by. Life is not the Instagram shots or ‘making memories’ moments. It’s the trip to the supermarket, it’s endlessly checking your bank balance, it’s the dayjob and the cooking and washing up. It’s the dead moments that count for nothing. Those moments occupy the majority of time. And on this track, a low laser drone slowly undulates throughout, and over time, fades in and out, along with incidentals which allude to lighter shades, and ultimately, the nine minutes it occupies simply slip away.
‘Zone In [landscape]’ is sparse but dense, moody and atmospheric in its rumbling minimalism, and the last cut, ‘Zone Warming [hidden]’ chimes and echoes, bells ringing out into endless silence, without response, before tapering contrails of sound slowly and subtly weave their ways in and out. There are spells of silence, and the silence casts spells, and the spells float upwards in suspension.
Perhaps an appreciation of the context and theoretical framing of Horizons of Suspended Zones is advantageous, but it remains accessible as an abstract ambient work without that deeper comprehension. And it still feels as if there’s a sadness which permeates the entirety of the album. It’s by no means heavy, but it does have an emotional weight that drags the listener in, and then drags the listener down. And then leaves them… simply nowhere. Caught with their thoughts, and nowhere to take them. Christopher Nosnibor
W świecie zdominowanym przez natychmiastowość, w którym dźwięki konkurują o naszą uwagę jak kolorowe reklamy, Haarvöl proponuje coś radykalnie innego: zatrzymanie, zawieszenie, wyciszenie. Horizons of Suspended Zones to specyficzny manifest akustycznej niezgody na logikę współczesnego czasu. „Czas musi zostać nieposłuszny” – piszą twórcy. I robią wszystko, byśmy jako słuchacze poczuli, jak to jest trwać poza rytmem świata.
Płyta zbudowana jest na trzech fundamentach: powtórzeniu, ciszy i trwaniu. To one definiują każdy z sześciu utworów, skomponowanych i zagranych przez Fernando José Pereirę i João Farię bez późniejszej ingerencji. Żadnych efektów, cięć, kompresji, ani dopieszczania brzmień w postprodukcji. Słyszymy to, co się wydarzyło – i nic poza tym. Nagranie staje się dokumentem zdarzenia, a nie produktem.
W ten sposób Haarvöl buduje swoją własną „tymczasową strefę autonomii” – koncept zaczerpnięty od Hakima Beya, który już w latach 90. ostrzegał, że przestrzeń wirtualna nie jest wyzwoleniem, lecz kolejnym polem eksploatacji przez kapitalizm. Ich dźwięk funkcjonuje jak heterotopia – istnieje tylko na marginesie systemu, dopóki nie zostanie przez niego przechwycony. W przeciwieństwie do dźwiękowego przesytu, który oferuje dzisiejsza technologia – bardziej, głośniej, szybciej – Haarvöl proponują mniej, ciszej, wolniej. Surowe struktury, oszczędne faktury, spokój.
Każdy utwór wydaje się być zapisem trwania w zawieszeniu. Brak tu rytmu w tradycyjnym sensie – jest za to puls czekania, momenty narastania i wygasania. Powtórzenia nie prowadzą do kulminacji, lecz do subtelnej przemiany, jakby coś powoli zmieniało swój kształt niepostrzeżenie. To muzyka słuchania – nie dla rozrywki, lecz dla skupienia. Gdy przestajemy oczekiwać zmiany, stajemy się gotowi ją zauważyć.
Wrażenie robi szczególna dbałość o przestrzeń – nie dźwięk wypełnia tu ciszę, ale cisza podtrzymuje dźwięk. To nauka wyniesiona od Cage’a, lecz tutaj rozciągnięta i ugruntowana w niemal organiczny sposób. Każdy dźwięk wydaje się unikalny, niepowtarzalny, jak gdyby za chwilę miał się rozpłynąć – i właśnie dlatego tak mocno wybrzmiewa.
Horizons of Suspended Zones to płyta, która wymaga gotowości do bycia tu i teraz. Nie oferuje łatwej narracji, nie daje jasnych rozwiązań, nie obiecuje katharsis. Zamiast tego otwiera przestrzeń – pustą, lecz żywą – w której coś może się wydarzyć. Być może tylko przez chwilę. Ale to wystarczy. Artur Mieczkowski
At the end of the 1990s, Hakim Bey wrote a book about the then-emerging possibility of the virtual. With the lucidity for which he is known, he recognized at the time that the virtual was nothing more than a new avenue for the expansion of capitalism. He introduced the concept of temporary autonomous zones as a kind of Foucauldian heterotopia— spaces that existed only for as long as they could evade capture. Today’s reality reflects a radical intensification of what Bey was referring to in the 1990s. Temporalities have changed completely. We are now almost overwhelmed by an incessant pursuit of instantaneity, accompanied by the mounting impatience it inevitably breeds.
The temporalities of sound, therefore, are naturally different too.
Time must be disobeyed.
The sounds of our autonomous zones aim to be the opposite of what technology offers us today: fascination and dazzle through excess — more buttons, more effects, louder… AI. These are bare sounds, defiantly rejecting the paraphernalia that surrounds them. They are simple yet perhaps carry the greatest complexity of all: turning their backs on spectacle and presenting themselves as they are: unmasked.
This work is the outcome of a series of studio sessions recorded during the summer and autumn of 2024. We followed an exploratory approach grounded in clearly defined premises and a pre-conceived compositional outline shaped by three key notions that are central to us: repetition, silence, and duration.
There is no post-production manipulation. What you hear is what was played. Inactual by conviction, this represents an utterly contemporary mode of being. These are sounds that seek to endure as a resistant, autonomous possibility — even if only fleetingly. Suspended between silences. Those marvelous, singular, sounds that Cage taught us to hear. They are there to last for as long as they can.
Composed and played by Fernando José Pereira and João Faria at the backyard studios. Haarvöl are Fernando José Pereira (sounds), João Faria (sounds), Rui Manuel Vieira (images).
Mit “Horizons of Suspended Zones” veröffentlichen Haarvöl am 1. Juli ein neues Werk bei Crónica als CD und Download. Die beiden Musiker Fernando José Pereira und João Faria bewegen sich darauf bewusst abseits technischer Reizüberflutung. Statt Effektfülle oder Lautstärke setzen sie auf Reduktion, auf Wiederholung, auf Dauer und auf das, was zwischen den Klängen passiert. Die Aufnahmen entstanden im Sommer und Herbst vergangenen Jahres in konzentrierten Studiosessions. Alle Stücke folgen einer klar umrissenen Idee, wurden in Echtzeit eingespielt und im Anschluss nicht weiter bearbeitet. Was man hört, ist also genau das, was tatsächlich gespielt wurde in einem zeitlichen Verständnis, das sich dem Drang zur Sofortigkeit und Beschleunigung verweigert. Immer wieder tauchen in diesen Stücken rauschende, dröhnende Klangwellen auf, deren Klangfarbe entfernt an Schiffssirenen erinnert, jedoch nie statisch bleibt. Dazwischen: bimmelnde Akzente wie von Messingglocken, helle und dunkle Töne, sorgfältig austariert und einiges mehr.
Der Titel “Horizons of Suspended Zones” bezieht sich auf ein Buch von Hakim Bey, dessen Idee temporärer, nicht einholbarer Räume sich hier in klanglicher Form wiederfindet. Dazu und weiterführend heißt es beim Label: “At the end of the 1990s, Hakim Bey wrote a book about the then-emerging possibility of the virtual. With the lucidity for which he is known, he recognized at the time that the virtual was nothing more than a new avenue for the expansion of capitalism. He introduced the concept of temporary autonomous zones as a kind of Foucauldian heterotopia — spaces that existed only for as long as they could evade capture. Today’s reality reflects a radical intensification of what Bey was referring to in the 1990s. Temporalities have changed completely. We are now almost overwhelmed by an incessant pursuit of instantaneity, accompanied by the mounting impatience it inevitably breeds. The temporalities of sound, therefore, are naturally different too. Time must be disobeyed. The sounds of our autonomous zones aim to be the opposite of what technology offers us today: fascination and dazzle through excess — more buttons, more effects, louder… AI. These are bare sounds, defiantly rejecting the paraphernalia that surrounds them. They are simple yet perhaps carry the greatest complexity of all: turning their backs on spectacle and presenting themselves as they are: unmasked”. Das Artwork basiert auf Bildern von Rui Manuel Vieira, der ebenfalls als volles Mitglied der Gruppe gilt. via African Paper
IliaBelorukov’s “NRDDRMTWO2022–2024” is not your average percussion album – it’s a sonic séance with a machine. Across thirteen tracks, this Russian-Serbian experimentalist transforms his NordDrum2 into a kaleidoscope of tempos, textures, and reverberant spaces, all on a strict one-step pattern that mutates over time. Think of it as minimalism caught in motion: a single rhythmic seed sprouting variants as tempo drifts.
Belorukov stumbled onto this method while pushing the Drum2’s six channels through tempo ranges and reverb algorithms; suddenly, a small tweak in delay or resonance made sounds bloom into entirely different creatures. Tracks are titled like schematics – “4.31, 4+5+6, 270–140” – but they’re anything but clinical. Instead, they reveal playful curiosity and sonic empathy, like birdwatching frequencies in their natural habitat.
And let’s be real: each track is a miniature adventure in acoustics. One moment you’re swimming in low-end rumble at 300 BPM, the next you’re plucking echoes at 50 BPM. Yet there’s no overthinking here – Belorukov recorded everything live, at the moment, no edits, just EQ and compression afterward. The result is elastic, alive, sometimes hypnotic, sometimes unnerving.
What surprises is how much emotive force this can hold. Vital Weekly noted you might feel nothing at first, but give it volume and space – and suddenly all these layers snap into focus: a texture-rich field that rewards patience. It’s sonic minimalism made maximal, not by adding elements, but by coaxing meaning from tiny shifts in repetition and space.
Belorukov isn’t just playing a drum synth; he’s conversing with it. His background – deep in improvisation, noise, electroacoustic work, saxophone, modular systems – feeds into this: he doesn’t impose patterns, he discovers them. “NRDDRMTWO” is part tribute to red Nord box and part field recording of an electronic creature evolving in real time.
In short, this CD is a quietly radical statement. It’s not flashy, but it is full of intent: each tempo shift morphs emotional terrain, each reverb change reshapes the room, and each track feels like a fragment of a larger exploration. Listen loud, and you’ll glimpse something that’s both machine-made and eerily organic – a dance of code and chance you didn’t know you needed.
Why it matters: – Tempo as form – one-step pattern becomes polymorphic through speed. – Space as ingredient – reverb isn’t decoration; it’s co-author. – Live spontaneity – no edits, pure in-the-moment creation. – Emotive minimalism – volume and patience reveal surprising depth.
If you’re tired of overproduced beatwork and crave something that breathes and evolves on its own terms, “NRDDRMTWO2022–2024” is your companion: a patient explorer of rhythm’s hidden architecture. Vito Camarretta
Mit “NRD DRM TWO 2022–2024″ veröffentlicht Ilia Belorukov bei Crónica eine neue Sammlung von Aufnahmen, die sich einem präzise gesetzten formalen Prinzip widmen: einem einstufigen Pattern mit variierendem Tempo, gespielt ausschließlich auf dem Nord Drum 2. Die Stücke entstanden in einem konzentrierten Arbeitsprozess zwischen 2022 und 2024, ohne nachträgliche Bearbeitung oder Schnitte. Lediglich minimale klangtechnische Eingriffe wie Kompression und Equalisierung kamen zum Einsatz.
Im Zentrum steht dabei weniger rhythmische Virtuosität als das feine Ausloten von Frequenzverhalten und räumlicher Tiefe. Vom Label heißt es: “The Nord Drum 2 has six channels, and in most scenarios, even one single channel gives a lot of sound to dive into the changing tempo’s routine. Besides that, this time Belorukov was concentrating on reverberation algorithms applied to the synthesiser’s sound. Creating artificial spaces made a huge impact on music and even a small addition of reverberation deeply transforms the sound. Adjusting parameters is an endless process, and he tried to simplify it to keep the idea of making music on the spot without overthinking. No edits or additional recordings were made. After the recording, some equalisation and compression were used to complete each piece.” Das Album erscheint als CD und zum Download.
Impressive two-disc composition by Philippe Petit on A Divine Comedy (CRÓNICA 212-2024).
This Marseilles fellow has certainly come a long way since he started out as a DJ, radio presenter and zine publisher in the 1980s, even eclipsing his later label ventures for experimental electronica such as Pandemonium RDZ and BiP_Hop. This one is an ambitious project reflecting his studies at the CNRR Conservatoire, his mastery of multi-channel presentation and acousmatic spatialisation, and general use of modular synths. Yes, he’s taking on the classic works of Dante, covering everything from the Inferno to Purgatory and Paradise, a theme also highly popular with visual artists…not just Gustave Doré, but the English painter and book-maker Tom Philips, who nearly bankrupted his accounts producing his lavish art book version, and the maverick cartoonist Gary Panter who produced remarkable visual and literary statements when he cast his own cyber-punk character Jimbo as an unlikely hero to re-enact these epic voyages into the unknown.
Of course our man Petit is well aware of all such histories, and takes pains to distance himself from them to some extent; he does not want to adhere too closely to the original text of Dante, nor to tell a story, but rather to follow the precepts of Expressionism and see how far he can get riding on the back of that wild tiger. To put it another way, he wants his sumptuous sounds to “project subjectivity”, and “deform reality”, in order to produce highly emotional responses in the audience – sentiments likely to be endorsed by 20th-century painters such as Kirchner, Munch, Kandinsky, and Marc. Petit is also well-informed about the history of formal electro-acoustic experiments, and refers specifically to Divine Comédie, en epic work composed I think around 1971-72 by two titans of the genre, Bernard Parmegiani and François Bayle. (I’m surprised not to have heard of this meisterwerk sooner, but it only came out on CD in 1995, and was recently put onto four vinyl LPs by Recollection GRM.) Philippe Petit does not dismiss these grand masters out of hand, but his perception is that they were aiming for a sort of “soundtrack” of the afterlife, acting like Walter Murch providing sound design for an imaginary 1970s cinema project of Coppola that never existed.
Interestingly, it seems Franz Liszt has proven the better template for Petit’s purposes, proposing a “symphony” form based on the main stations of the arduous journey which Dante and Virgil must undertake. Petit also went back to Doré, building up a library of sounds and tones by using his imaginative powers to devise “musical pigments” from what he could see. At all times, the aim has been to keep things dynamic, a music in constant motion; perhaps it’s the danger of stasis, often associated with overly-literal illustrative techniques, that he was trying to avoid. Cases in point might be Le Livre Des Morts Égyptien or Apocalypse De Jean, both composed by Pierre Henry; no doubt they scrupulously honoured the truth of their sources, be they drawn from cartouches or New Testament texts, but somewhere they failed to ignite the passions we might associate with these very strong themes of the afterlife and the end of the world. Conversely, Philippe Petit – even though he gets a bit carried away with notions of “magic illusions” and “aural trickery”, as he attempts to convince us of the profound nature of his transformations – has turned in an exciting, powerful, and imaginative work. Those of a macabre bent (like myself) will no doubt savour the juicy, uncanny noises to be found on the Inferno disc, especially the vivid portrait of Lucifer, but there is also much to recommend on the more considered and atmospheric emanations for Purgatorio and Paradiso, where the audio pyrotechnics give way to restrained, focussed compositions of distilled intensity.
As a last word, I might remind the reader about Vidna Obmana and his Dante Trilogy, a 2001-2004 work that was reissued recently in Poland. The Belgian, lui, paid scant attention to the Dante texts, but did succeed in creating memorable dark ambient billows that were highly suited to the theme. From 2nd January 2024. Ed Pinsent
