ACOUSMATOMISATION
by FALLEN SUN I SACHER PELZ I THOMAS BEY WILLIAM BAILEY
Italian 'industrial music' overlord Maurizio Bianchi returns to attenuation circuit for another release in tandem with our partner label Grubenwehr Freiburg. For this collaborative album with Fallen Sun, which is the industrial / noise project from Malaysia and U.S. sound artist and writer Thomas Bey William Bailey, he has reactivated his early project name Sacher Pelz.
“Acousmatomisation” is a programmatic title, as are all the track titles with their references to physics. With its 'scientific' approach, the track list could come from a Bernard Parmegiani album as well as from techno avantgardists Dopplereffekt/Arpanet. Trained physicists may decide if the tracks actually sound like a plausible sonification of the phenomena mentioned in the titles. Meanwhile, each and every listener can enjoy this one-hour journey through the interferences of tones – sometimes extreme in their frequency – and noise. Sound masses coalesce, solidify, pulsate and drone, and eventually, they disintegrate into particles, which in turn regroup and morph into new structures. On the way, the compositions make use of a rich palette of textures and effects, opening our ears to the wide range of possibilities of electronic musics, as hinted at in the above references to wildly different practitioners of this art.
File under: electroacoustic, noise
ACU 1071
factory-pressed CD in Digisleeve
Released 2. May 2025
limited to 200 copies
price: 12.00 EUR (excl. postage)
attenuation circuit ACU 1071 / Grubenwehr Freiburg GW/FR:55 ° 2025
attenuationcircuit.de ° grubenwehrfreiburg.bandcamp.com
ALL COMPOSED / EDITED / TRANSFORMED IN SPRING 2024
realised with analog / modular / pulsar synthesis, realtime digital processing, sampling, found sound
cover art collage by Maurizio Bianchi
package design / layout by Thomas Bey William Bailey
mastered for cd by Ryoko Ono
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also available as:
C90 Tape cassette+ CD in a digifile. comes in a handprepared Box with sprayed parts of old audio-platinas and a black glove as the packing for the tape and a stamped and numbered envelope as the inner-packing for the CD. (ltd.50).
Also available here: http://www.discogs.com/seller/dependenz?sort=price&sort_order=asc&q=attenuation+circuit&st
VITAL WEEKLY
It’s a no-brainer to start with the collaboration, which comes as quite a surprise: Maurizio Bianchi, for once working as Sacher Pelz, a name he used in the very early days of his career, in the late 1970s), Malaysia’s Fallen Sun and from the USA, we greet Thomas Bey William Bailey. As usual, there isn’t a single person to do the mix, and credit goes to all. The six pieces got their titles from physics, and I am no expert, so I couldn’t say if what we hear resembles what they are called. The sceptic in me says ‘Great idea, so why bother to check this?” I think all three are expert handlers of all sonic matters working with digital technology, so I imagine this to be no different. They reference Bernard Parmegian and Dopplereffekt/Arpanet. I may not be too familiar with the latter, but I did hear music by the first, and I can see the connection with the classic musique concrète and the development into acousmatic music; the title of this album is, after all, a clever wordplay on that, combined with physics. The 62 minutes, totalling six tracks, is quite a tour de force to listen to. This is no easy listening. That’s not to say it is a noise album, one hour is distorted electronics; actually, far from it. The music is loud, fierce, and full of varied noises, processes and quieter fragments, perhaps making the album difficult. It’s filled with sounds, from top to bottom, like a Hollywood blockbuster. The listener rarely gets time to breathe, as even in quiet moments, something is happening, and your full and undivided attention is required. While much of the album uses digital means, there’s an odd piece, ‘Concrete Absorption’, which sounds like old-fashioned industrial music, with rusty tape loops and many stomp boxes. That’s an interesting material diversification, but it fits right in, mainly because it’s followed by the Merzbowian approach of ‘Particle Deterioration’. Maybe this album has more analogue power than I anticipated? Maybe great plug-ins to simulate that kind of thing? I don’t know, but, well-exhausted, I think this is a great album.
https://www.vitalweekly.net/number-1483
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