Our Features Editor Bob Baker Fish caught US electronic artist Charles Cohen playing his Buchla Sound Easel in a disused church in Lisbon last year as part of the Out.Fest in Barreiro Portugal. His performance was remarkable, having been his instrument of choice for for the last 30 odd years, his control over the parameters was simply extraordinary and his set, not unlike this piece, was an exercise in patience and restraint, building elements gradually and morphing them before our ears until they took on a whole new form. We challenge your jaw not to be on the floor at the end of this 13 odd minutes.
“Composer, improviser, and Buchla Music Easel master Charles Cohen returns to Morphine with a suite of new material. In keeping with the timbre spectrum of his semi-modular system, Brother I Prove You Wrong is built around pointillist analog tones—Cohen’s cosmic “beeps and boops”—that swarm and scatter in mesmeric patterns across four sides. Moving through surrealistic textural overlays and industrial miasma, the album’s nine tracks reveal a more introspective and personal side of the artist, following from a retrospective LP trilogy released via Morphine in 2013. Those assembled works, dating back to the late ’70s, quickly became essential listening and brought Cohen—at the time largely unknown outside Philadelphia’s experimental circuit—to critical renown.”
Brother I Prove You Wrong was recorded in Berlin in September 2014 using the Buchla Music Easel, with production help and support from Rabih Beaini. Mastered by Neel and curated and designed by TankBoys; cover art by Nathalie du Pasquier.
More details here.
