Articles
Slow Six
Label Profile: Fällt
Alexander Turnquist

Albums
4 Bonjour's Parties
AGF
Atlas Sound
Autistic Daughters
Baja
Evan Bartholomew
Sylvain Chauveau
Destroyalldreamers
DoF
Dot Tape Dot
Fessenden
Floriana vs. Màcro
Florian Hecker
I Am A Vowel
Jaermulk Manhattan
Steve Jansen
LabField
Liar's Rosebush
Eliot Lipp
Luminous
Mojib
Monocle
Nicolay & Kay
Panda Riot
Ghislain Poirier
Prosumer & Murat Tepeli
randomNumber
Sambassadeur
Starting Teeth
Carl Stone
Strings of Consciousness
Suite Crude Revue
Text Adventure
Alexander Turnquist
Valet
Viirus
Willits + Sakamoto
Yaporigami

Compilations/Mixes
Armin Van Buuren
Caroline
Goodbye Said the Rain
Sieben Mal Solo
A Weevil in a Biscuit

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
0>1
A Setting Sun
The Bug ft. Warrior Queen
Myungho Choi
Deadbeat
Entsounds
Itosha
JDSY
l'Objet
Noah Pred
Repair
The Retail Sectors
Socks & Sandals
Someone Else
Trembling Blue Stars
.xtrak

I Am A Vowel: Et Op La Bang
Fang Bomb

The textural sound-sculpting on Et Op La Bang, Nelly Larguier's I Am a Vowel debut album, is so restrained it begs to be labeled introverted (said restraint even extends to the album's twenty-five-minute running time). The Paris-based musician creates tiny vignettes of ambient stillness from voice fragments, guitar, laptop, and tiny pebbles of sound. The album's eight modest pieces scatter ghostly vocal swirls with interference (“Et”), present the chatter of tiny organisms and droplets striking the water's surface (“La”), and mix cuckoo-like clock noises and serenading vocal sounds (“Une Etoile”). Larguier sometimes shifts the focus from natural noises (clicks, rattles, whirrs, wind tones) to stuttering voice fragments (“Bang” and “Bang Bang”). Et Op La Bang isn't a bad recording by any means but its brief running time makes it feel slight and sketchy, and therefore hard to get too excited about. Had, say, forty-five minutes of equivalent material been issued, the resultant album probably would have made a stronger impression.

February 2008