the same girl: Spare Parts & The Ideology Toolkit
Schraum

Berliner Gilles Aubry and Geneva resident Nicolas Field push their blistering computer and percussion explorations to raucous extremes on the same girl's Spare Parts & The Ideology Toolkit. Coaxing a huge range of electro-acoustic noise from their respective gear throughout the fifty-minute recording, the simpatico pair alternates real-time improvisations (“Spare Parts”) with field recordings (“The Ideology Toolkit”) made in Russia and Croatia. In the first set (titles in lower case), Aubry plays his computer through bass and guitar amps, converting it into an improvising kin to Field's percussion, while the second set (their titles in caps, “RECOURS A LA PEUR” one example) offers brief respites from the abstract explorations of the longer pieces (a couple in the ten-minute range).

The stop-start rhythms and cymbal clatter of “remaining dazzled” introduce a Noh theatre dimension at the outset but the tide turns with “riveted nostrils” when the computer generates dissonant screeches and whirrs, with both instruments simulating rabid rodents attempting to burrow through concrete. “silicone sonata” works up a churning broil while the computer sputters and scrapes in “heavy hat,” its pulsating rumbles at times suggesting the riffs of a confused heavy metal band. Aubry and Field manufacture some incredible contrasts. Whereas the harrowingly intense ““Leica, we're loosing speed…”” merges a Merzbow-esque choking seizure (Aubry) with the scattershot ferocity of free jazz playing (Field), “tombstone zigzag” simulates a nightmarish crawl. The surprises continue until the end with the closer “dress rehearsal” four minutes of… silence, followed by twenty seconds of field-recorded conversation. Ultimately, one admires the musicians' energy and the fearlessness of their spontaneous approach, even if the recording generally amounts to uneasy listening.

May 2006