“Product 05” reviewed by Touching Extremes

While it’s true that many concrete/electronic projects on the current scene sound more or less similar, some of them are made with a care for the detail which distances them from the crowd. Such is the case of this split CD: Freiband, one of the many names of Frans De Waard, produces music through the reworking of pre-recorded materials going into a process of hard disk scratching; just another glitch and noise release, right? Dead wrong: the sounds mostly manifest themselves in pretty tranquil spirals, their slowly mutating skin showing a mixture of static sweetness and menacing sub-distortion inviting not to lower your guard any moment. Boca Raton (Martijn Tellinga) works within the realms of pregnant austerity through acousmatic tracks mixing field recordings, white noise whirlwinds, small-sound activity à la Asmus Tietchens and more than one wink to silence itself. The sapient assembling and scarce processing of the source material adds a touch of spontaneous ingenuity that elevates this music from the cauldron of the “already heard”; it meshes fine with my own environment, too – and the last track “Circle ‘8” is a profound Ilios-like planetary vibration.

Massimo Ricci

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