Lawrence English & Philip Samartzis – One Plus One (Room40)

It’s huge, this giant mechanical, pulsating, booming repetitive, skipping electronic beast that blunders along gathering speed, wheezing, spurting, moaning before fading out into flecks of static. Vinyl static. Melbourne sound artist Philip Samartzis has previously worked with turntables in his duo Gum that existed in the late eighties. So perhaps for a trip down memory lane he hooks up with Brisbane based Lawrence English for One Plus One (Room40). Of course you know already that Q-Bert is definitely not in the house, the development is gradual, almost hypnotic as the duo are interested in exploring and building textural repetition, and perhaps even more specifically drawing from the likes of Christian Marclay and Philip Jeck and focussing on the mechanics of turntablisim where the surface noise of vinyl and cyclical rhythmic repetition are utilised create some quite gentle and engaging pieces. It’s quite dense work. There is a myriad of activity, particularly texturally throughout the four tracks on offer here as the duo build a bed of sound and then gradually add or subtract. Interestingly their more rhythmic work is the most effective, where they are actually focussing less on their mechanical gestures and more on warping their vinyl such as the nostalgic noise fest Goin Home.