Laminae extolls a by no means exceptional genetic structure, though it’s constantly evolving state suggests a forceful guiding intelligence in the producer’s chair. It’s strata shift in and out of phase; new patterns emerge and new harmonic information is magically conjured.
Michael Cottone is also comfortable letting his infinitely layered drones rub up against each other and clash so as to establish contrasts both in timbre and tone, resulting in some delightfully ambiguous passages. These drones enjoy a certain intersubjectivity with an array of micro-engineered pleasures. They are always open and mutually reinforced by some pitchless, softly noisy electronic whispers and wheezes on pieces such as “a thin plate, scale, or layer”. During “Botany. the blade or expanded portion of a leaf”, too, the linear blips and gulps lag and lurch out of phase with the warm, phosphorent textures, like damp clothes in a washing machine that tumble haphazardly over themselves, before finally and euphorically locking back into place after several minutes.
Organic instruments add a fresh layer of significance to all this, breaking it up with the opacity of a kind of distant past. Inasmuch as this is the case, they accentuate more than they assault. They unfold with the electronics as though on a common ground and are for the most part anonymous, unintrusive, even at times unnoticeable. All of this is to the albums advantage. When they are called forth, they are inserted into a shared operation owing to the state of the proceedings. Thus there’s nothing fortuitous about this recording. And once one adjusts to its climate, it soon becomes apparent how beautifully made these pieces are.
Max Schaefer
