“Lengvai / 60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz sound” reviewed by Touching Extremes

I’m certainly not attracted by the large part of contemporary glitch-and-skip electronica, but this double CD by Gintas Kraptavicius is surely a good antidote against the “light-hearted laptop” syndrome that is affecting the world today. Will anyone ever prevent all these nondescript twiddlers from releasing neat-sounding “bell-and-whistle” tiny songs slightly disturbed by electrostatics to give them that oh-so-experimental aroma? Luckily, Gintas K is not one of these entities. “Lengvai” contains five pretty long pieces of “techno vs industrial” with perfectly clean, but also horribly dirty crunches to spare (a few sections sound like a cybernetic version of Muslimgauze’s late production); ear-tickling frequencies and harsh stabs of hissing noise alternate with nerve-massaging combinations of distorted/flanged waves. The title of the second disc is self-explanatory: starting from a single 2kHz tone we’re pierced, intrigued, distracted and often amused by the bleeping hypnosis and test-like pulse of this digital ultra-minimalism. Near-inaudibility deprivations and ice-cold headaches are all contained in a simple concept that work better than honey-dripping, third rate Fennesz-ism. With this stuff you could even punish, if so desired, your “thing-that-wouldn’t-leave” kind of undesired home guests.