The superb match between two artists who stand for two different generations in Netherlands comes true on a disc from Portuguese label Cronica. Even though all of them are based on the live recordings at a festival that took place in Netherlands in 2004, they sound solidly well-constructed. Who wouldn’t disbelieve that they are not studio works unless told?
Also known as a workaholic amongst Vital Weekly subscribers, Frans de Waard (b.1965) has a long and brilliant career that started with releases on cassette tapes two decades ago and nowadays also leads the experimental music scene. This CD begins with his tracks created with a laptop. These are presented under the most recent of his monikers Freiband. They are close to the tracks of Goem in the aspect of sound texture, and the beatless structure helps to emphasize the vivid sounds. There are eleven of his tracks everyone of which has the length of around three minutes. These short tracks produce amazingly seamless sequences to build up a long piece over thirty minutes as a whole. The massive sonic boom here has stately presence enough to be critical against transient movements by young laptop artists that emerge every season with styles which are novel but also easy to be followed by others.
Next on the disc are tracks by Martijn Tellinga (b.1974) behind the alias Boca Raton, who runs Mixer label in Amsterdam and also has been released his own solo works through several labels around the world in the past few years. His production method of using a computer to compose with primalily field-recorded sound pieces is commonly used in the field of electroacoustic music. However, his output is totally different from other artists like Francisco Lopez, Bernhard Gunter, Christophe Charles, Marc Behrens, John Hudak, Philip Samartzis, Steve Roden & Brandon Labelle. Tellinga successfully built up his own unique style and keeps going ahead in the field that they have never stepped into. Without being stuck in the trap of signal processing which seems to be easy to create curious sounds, and not depending on conventional climactic structures, Tellinga focuses on sound materials with a remarkable patience and carefully represents a sort of dynamics his materials have in nature. There are eight tracks with the strength enough to be evenly-matched with tracks of de Waard. There is no need to doubt his talent at all. He has been creating and steadily brushing up his own manner of sound manipulation. Now it seems that his explorations are acquireing a kind of sophistication. Who would disagree that Boca Raton is to be called one of the most promising artists?
Takemasa Hideho