V/A - FOURFOLD SYMMETRY
KIM CASCONE/ KOTRA / ANDREAS BERTHLING / ANDREY KIRITCHENKO

Nexsound (Ukraine), 2002 | ns08

CD. €10 | Buy

V/A - FOURFOLD SYMMETRY. KIM CASCONE/ KOTRA / ANDREAS BERTHLING / ANDREY KIRITCHENKO

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Listen:
KIM CASCONE "Glass Legs"
KOTRA "7-5-2"

special plastic package

The album is based upon the very questionable in itself creative concept of co-authorship, which is implemented through the sound exchange via regular and electronic mail: musicians play with each other's samples striving to carve out the new unpredictable sounding. This music is interesting by its nature: despite the initial sources similarity the outcome is always highly individual and bears the personal impress of each musician in each track.

Let the good times roll. A project like this finds it's origins in 'Distruct' by P16.D4. Various bands mailed their sound material to P16.D4 who built a new piece of music from those sounds, by combining the various inputs. 'Distant Structures' it was called. A project that took some time to realize, since everything was done on cassette tapes and reel to reel tapes send back and forth. How unlike today, when you put your sounds on an IP server and someone else downloads it and uploads his results in a matter of seconds. The number of exchange levels increase by factor uncountable. So 'Fourfold Symmetry' is one such meeting of two Russian guys Andrey Kiritchenko (who runs the label who released this) and Kotra (aka Dmytro Fedrorenko) and Norway's Andreas Berthling and the grandfather of microsound Kim Cascone (who seems to having a lot of fun doing projects like this). These four people exchange their digital sound files through the net, and from probably the smallest sources they re-create their own new works. I am wondering however about the result, which is not a bad one, but maybe also a bit faceless. Everything hisses and scratches and the Max/Msp software works well for everybody. No matter what the input is, the output sounds the same altogether, even when this set has fourteen tracks, which may sound all a bit different. Cascone's pieces may be more along the lines of ambient and Kotra more along the lines of rhythm and loops, but in the end it's all digitalia. With a project like 'Distruct' one had the oppurtunity to recognize the various bands' inputs (ah that's the Nurse With Wound bit), which is entirely gone here. That is a bit of a pity. Otherwise it's just a nice CD that goes down well with the current microsounders. (FdW)
vital weekly

This album features 14 tracks with various combinations of Andreas Berthing, Kim Cascone, Audrey Kiritchenko, and Kotra remixing each other's source material through digital means. Whatever the source material might have been is irrelavent, as the the end results on "Fourfold Symmetry" are a polite demonstration of the parameters of abstraction of the digital glitch, with a dedicated metholodogy that favors anonymity and anti-emotionality. For all of the rhetoric about the chance operations and coaxing of errors between the man / machine interface, this album is exactly what you'd expect: bristling collages of granular synthesis and digital feedback from Max / MSP patches toppling computerized droning fluctuations of sound.
Aquarius

I still remember clearly when, a couple of years ago, I started listening to some obscure tapes from an ukrainian label called Nexsound, which were following by a few CDRs released on other labels of works by Nihil Est Excellence, the ambient project behind which hid Andrey Kiritchenko, founder of Nexsound, radio and video DJ, and experimentalist extraordinaire. And since I have several times written that somebody, sometime, had to finally recognize this artist's talent, it seems that he has been able to take his Nexsound label to yet a new, bigger step. Past the "Polivox Populi" compilation, a snapshot of Ukraine's bubbling drone, ambient and noise musicians, here comes "Fourfold Symmetry", the most ambitiout project of this label to date, and hopefully one that will bring the spotlight even closer. "Fourfold symmetry", a (professional) CD packaged in a beautifully folded cardboard sleeve, presents 14 co-authored tracks gathering the famous Kim Cascone (Mille Plateaux / Ritornell, music-editor for David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" and "Twin Peaks"), the almost famous Andreas Berthling (Mitek, Staalplaat) and the not famous yet Andrey Kiritchenko (Mr. Nexsound and Nihil Est Excellence) and Kotra (another Nexsound artist from Ukraine). One after another, they have proposed sound sources to each other, and built tracks from what they had gathered from the other three. Things crackle, crack, slide and pop on this CD. From minimalistic glitches to short feedback, to analog overdrive to microscopic piece of waveforms, these four musicians are not here to break any album sales records here, but rather to show how diverse and yet interesting experimentations with noises and glitches can be. Utterly abstract, looped or improvised, often scraping, sometimes melodic, always laid back, the music that lies here for us to listen to is definitely a mechanic thing, dry and dynamic. No overdub, no reverb and no rolling basses are to be found in this assemblage of high pitched machine sounds, and are replaced by a very good sound production and a recording that allows the listener to focus on the dynamic and clicky aspect. The tracks are well articulated together and the whole disc carries quite a coherent feeling, but one can still distinguish some slight differences according to the origin of the sound sources, Kotra being noisier, and Andrey Kiritchenko a bit gentler, for example. "Fourfold symmetry" is not something you are going to sing under the shower, and not something that will make you move your feet in rhythms. But it constitutes a very well done sonic installation, for more interesting and solid in its composition that most material it could be compared to. Fans of Mitek, Bip Hop, Ritornell or Mille Plateaux, or experimentation friendly ears, here is something that you have to get.
recycle your ears

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