Canberra-based musician / producer Reuben Ingall is certainly one of that city’s more prolific experimental / improvisation-based artists, seemingly constantly recording and releasing new music both on his own and as part of groups Central West and Silver Spine Orchestra. As its title and sleeve art hint, this latest cassette release ‘Microwave Drone Ritual’ sees Ingall using the sampled and treated sounds of a microwave oven alongside his own manipulated vocal elements to create hypnotic, drone-based compositions. Given the fact that each of the two tracks here (running exactly 10 minutes each in length) are medleys assembled from performances of the same piece in various venues both in Canberra and Tasmania, it’s striking just how different the two sides are from one another.
Ritual is certainly the operative word here. Side A opens with a moment of deadpan levity, with Ingall announcing “my name’s Reuben Ingall and tonight I’m going to cook a pie”, before plonking said meat-based pastry in the microwave alongside audience applause and starting the cooking cycle. From there though, it isn’t long before the miked up sounds of the microwave running and Ingall’s treated ghostly vocal harmonies begin to build into cavernous icy walls of reverbed texture and occasional distortion, the vast enveloping layers of sound invoking the deep concentration of some devotional ritual more than anything else.
In contrast, Side B sees Ingall pushing the wordless vocal hamonies more to the background in favour of a colder and more remote take on the same piece that sees the drones being processed into harsher and more arid textures, with the entire track sounding like it’s almost disappearing out into the deep vacuum of space at points here, before the howling synthetic loops finally die down. ‘Microwave Drone Ritual’ definitely qualifies as one of the more inspired creative uses of the home appliance I’ve encountered during 2015. Plus, a lucky audience member got to eat the pie at the end.
