My first meeting with the "trio" finds an enigmatically unfolding tableau of found-sound-gone-mad, driven sharply insane with an intellectually over-stretching of the mental muscles. Bookended with the nostalgic chorus of an old circus organ, Three Ways of Saying Two (48:01) gives way to industrial hisses, thumps and gigantic, muffled voices. Through most of the piece, a lecturer's voice reverberates out of an everchanging murk to opine upon a dizzying array of topics mental, social, political, religious, metaphysical, etc. etc. etc. Periodically shifting in abrupt re-orientations and sometimes backed by the steady rhythmic clatter of an old film projector, an almost continual speechstream yields words of mystic enlightenment (or delusional psychobabble).
Somewhat less verbose, The Butcher's Block (19:56) wends its way through an assortment of varying "scenes", from a hazily churning soundmass stricken by occasional random clatter, to a buzzy, 1930-ish violin and piano movement which is littered with whumps, cracks and splintering wood, to zones of minimalized voices, echoey rhythmification, shrill screeches like a cross between squealing brakes and an overheated tea kettle, to rapidly looping electric oscillations. Our lecturer friend returns with a few parables, then quiet noise winds it all down...
"Is there something, a real communicative creativity which is not reduceable by any conceivable ingenuity to the operations of a machine?" I think this recording proves that an acutely twisted mind can render an intriguing mixture (though how "communicative"?) of thought and sound that no machine could ever produce... Since "nature abhors a vaccuum", fill the void in your eclectic listening selections with these fascinating (though wordy) ruminations. (See four ways of saying H3O below)
