music reviews

Vox Barbara "the 5 senses"

ambient

Well this is a wonderful collection of instrumental ambient pieces centred on themes taken from an 18th century book called "Ravings of a Madman". From the album liner notes: "...5 senses, 5 ways of experiencing the world which were related to yet far more complex in scope than our current terra-humanic conception of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch..."

The music is terrific and highly recommended. It reminds me of early Zoviet France, Brian Eno's ambient works, and of the works of minimalist composers like Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, Lamont Young etc. It was recorded using household objects, human voice (though imperceptible as such), strum stick and a home-made paper/steel sculpture. "Liquidity", is my favourite, a meditative piece, structured around a repetitive Japanese-sounding string instrument motif with slowly crescendoeing drones, evolving into trippy percussion, and a metallic string instrument. "Spirit Musk" is similarly meditative with repetitive tribal acoustic percussion lines, drones, blasts, tinkering bells, gradual cresendoes and a strange meeting of paranormal mechanical frog noises at the end. "Resonance" is a quirky discordant piece, strange awkward melodies drone and merge into and out of each other. "The Stickiness of Colours" is a transient piece of ghostly noises, plonkings and breath. It melts into "Membraneous Absorption" which features multi-layered quirky percussion noise-things and ambient distortions. 5 tracks over 43 minutes.

Available for $10 U.S. from Little Man Records PO Box 45636 Seattle, Washington, 98145-0636, USA E-mail: [email protected] http://www.speakeasy.org/~vox/noise/barb.html