Phillip Samartzis & Kozo Inada – h()(Room40)

The first collaboration between Melbourne sound artist and electro acoustic performer Philip Samartzis and Japanese minimalist composer Kozo Inada is a tense almost austere episode of music concrete. Beginning with a steady warm electronic drone complete with crackles it gently builds in intensity before it abruptly crescendos out and ruptures into some decidedly low-key field recordings. Quickly it begins to build again, close mic’d the sound of fire is almost intolerable under a strange tactile movement of metal and that rupture again. The duo deftly moves through multiple sound worlds, uniting electronics and field recordings. The drones in particular are warm but menacing, becoming all encompassing, making Eraserhead seem positively passive in comparison. Over the drones things rattle, a tin is hit repeatedly and its abrupt nature finishes this episode. It feels like an exercise in assemblage, the sounds seeming to posses little relation with each other, apart from their placement in the mix, suggesting that the duo are more focussed on their ability to utilise disparate innovative compositional techniques to move between disparate worlds. Electronics are skittered through, though the strangest moment comes where a pure high-pitched electronic drone is melded with a warbling crow that whilst it sounds electronically treated probably isn’. Later the crow returns again untreated amidst a wall of cicadas and field recordings under which we hear people walking on a path. It’s surreal and slightly terrifying like much of this 20-minute piece that has been expertly crafted to unsettle.