Autistici is David Newman, producer of lowercase digitalia for the likes of 12k and head of the Audiobulb label. Slow Temperature is his second instalment of previously unreleased material, this time from between 2001-2005, after April’s Detached Metal Voice; Early Works Volume 1. For a subsequently-compiled collection of presumably unrelated tracks and off-cuts, Slow Temperature demonstrates a surprising degree of coherence and completion.
Favouring clunky bleep tones and modulating digital gloop, all clouded in random hiss, much of Slow Temperature recalls the likes of Daphne Oram, clipped Radiophonic Workshop products wedged into microsound structures. Source material derives from Newman’s domestic and local environments, evident from track titles (‘Cutlery’, ‘Farm’), and/or personal concerns (‘Counting Sleep’, ‘Workshop for Ambitious Dreamers’), and the music proceeds in a fittingly low-key, welcoming manner. Introductory ‘Waking the Sky’ features strings of bird calls announcing the day over murky haze and tape warble. ‘Stone Steps Into Water’ skips small blip pebbles into puddles, following the ripples in their dank circles. ’14 Switches on a Hidden Wall’, the longest piece here at ten minutes, coats rusty chimes and a sustained organ tone in flange and echo, while the two-minute sketch of ‘Soft Grey Generator’ pans crackle across the spectrum, and is just as pleasing.
Joshua Meggitt
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