Brain Cloud stands up as a formidable display of highwire tension. Pieces ebb and flow as blurred and incongruous amalgamations of throbbing overtones for harpsichord, piano, and electronics. The opening segment has an appealingly blank surface that, at times, becomes pockmarked with scratchy and gunmetal grey tones, which make for a comfortable and satisfying contrast with the warm yet melancholy contours that hover around them like a dizzying halo.
Tone and timbre of ululating electronics features heavily on “Brain Cloud I”. Asides from the fact that the piece delves well into shifting relationships between light, form, and space, the insistent incantations of the electronics against the grand, broad arrangement gives the work a spiritual tincture. Reinforcing this dimension, the lack of obvious beginnings, middles, and ends on certain compositions has the effect of short-circuiting a sense of time, the pieces playing out as a sort of corporeally challenging assault.
Joe Grimm (aka The Wind-Up Bird) carries on from the stolid progress of such deftly encoded montages, however, incorporating strident chromatics that come across as off-worldly and surprisingly expressive. The landslide of piano chords on “Brain Cloud III”, for example, makes for an immersive, caressing monument that closes off the album well. All in all, this is an endlessly alluring assemblage.
Max Schaefer
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