Never judge a CD by it’s (inner) cover. I have to confess that I read some of the notes on the inside of the sleeve of Gaseous Opal Orbs before listening and references such as “the time expansion and compression of pure sine wave tones and white noise” and “no samples or actual recordings of any kind were used” had me expecting a very dry, academic listening experience. Perhaps the title of the closing track (‘Are you aware of the pink light emenating from your naval?’ (sic)) should have been enough to ease my mind because what I found, instead, was an incredibly playful, adventurous and creative hour of music.
Fluorescent Grey is Record Label Records founder, Robbie Martin. Those descriptions above each only apply to single tracks. I can’t imagine he’d have much desire to explore one for a whole album. He seems to throw everything he can think of at his (assumed) laptop and, somehow, most of it sticks. The aforementioned sine waves appear in ‘Teleological Attractor’ and form a thick goo of molten lava over which digital flutters phase and squirm. And, more incredibly, this doesn’t sound odd coming directly after ‘Ahyuascaro Empyreal’ which sounds like a latin percussion rhythm section on speed jamming with a troupe of clowns rubbing balloons and squeezing rubber ducks. Yep. That’s the description I’m going with because it’s spot on. ‘Physically Modelled Theme For Children’ is electro-marimbas colliding with synthetic gongs with a simple shuffle coming in part way through to give a sense of groove. My guess is that ‘Palette Swap Dub’ was created exactly that way – swapping some sound sources with track collaborator Laurie A.K. until a gentle, dark dub pulse formed under all manner of delayed abstract noises. ‘Celtic K-Hole’ pits an Irish jig against, of all things, the drum loop from Run-DMC/Aerosmith’s ‘Walk This Way’. On reading back through this paragraph, it’s making the album sound rather schizophrenic. That’s probably an accurate description, but there’s a consistency to the mood which holds it all together quite strongly…just in case you were wondering how the pink lights “reverse engineered from the Super Nintendo sound chip” from that album finisher referred to earlier could possibly fit in with everything that’s gone before it.
This album makes me happy. It’s a bizarre, strange beast that has a surprise around every (and there’s a lot of them) corner. It’s possibly slightly let down by it’s early 90s ‘psychedelic’ artwork but, hey, the iPod generation cares nothing for that. And it’s a pretty minor squabble over what is really an excellent album.
Adrian Elmer
