Sintetic-Collage: Assisted Residence
Imaginary Nonexistent Records

Assisted Residence by Sintetic-collage (Raul Pueyo) is the second release from Imaginary Nonexistent in its ‘Series Monocromàtiques' line which focuses on ambient-experimental material of a highly personalized kind. That's reflected in the fact that a given release's material is tied to particular experiences the artist had while creating the recording. In this case, Pueyo found himself pulled away from the work he was doing in his studio by the construction of an assisted residence across the street. Helplessly drawn to the site, he explored the building, floor by floor and room by room, a pattern he repeated over many nights until a guard was assigned to the site. Before that happened, however, Pueyo attempted to absorb the vibrations and atmosphere of the location in order to catalyze them into aural form. It hardly needs stating, though, that the listener unaware of such background can just as easily enjoy the recording's forty-two minutes of atmospheric electronica as the listener fully briefed on its background detail (the cover photograph presumably shows the completed building). In isolated instances, a programmatic character emerges—the barrage of percussive noise heard throughout “Dubtes,” for example, could be taken for the punctuating strikes of hammers at the site—but much of the recording assumes an abstract form that accommodate no shortage of projected impressions. A modest degree of rhythm propulsion surfaces in the tracks “Neologismes” and “Estados Neutros” when percolating pulsations appear alongside the droning tones, but Assisted Residence largely spotlights limpid ambient-drone pools of synthetic, textured sound (the closing “Sutil” is especially pretty). Most of the nine pieces are two- to six-minute meditative set-pieces filled with clicks, pops, whirring tones, and keyboard meander, electric piano or otherwise.

April 2010