Blau is the debut release by sound artist Tomas Phillips and guitarist Jason Bivens. Phillips produces subdued waves of digital sound, gently flickering drones which ebb and flow through shifts in Max/MSP algorithm. It’s not quite ambient, but immersive and pleasantly reduced, with enough shards to keep listeners engaged. Bivens by contrast favours disruptive pockets of noise, circuit hum, socket buzz and feedback. He resists the obfuscating effects of Fennesz, instead championing his sounds’ origins, more like the guitar in Tim Hecker’s ‘My Love is Rotten to the Core’.
As such its an uneasy collaboration, where the two voices seem trapped in their own distinct timbral worlds. On track 2, Bivens locks into a kind of Oren Ambarchi-like bass drone, which melds pleasantly with Phillips’ skiterring ticker-tape, while track 3 builds from a subtle rustle into a resonant roar. Track 5 is their strongest, a dense fog of feedback squall coloured with random guitar grit and digital chirrup. Blau has moments of intrigue, but is rarely convincing.
Joshua Meggitt
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