Articles
Twine
Gregor Samsa
Ben Watt

Albums
Ellen Allien
Arc Lab
Beautiful Schizophonic
Collections of Colonies...
Dday One
Deepchord
Echoes of the Whales
Elika
erikm
Geskia
The Herbaliser
Wayne Horvitz
Sunao Inami
Intrusion
Labelle & Webb
M83
Stephen Mathieu
The Mole
Jon Mueller
Mueller / Kahn
Haruka Nakamura
Alexandre Navarro
Odd Nosdam
James Pants
Poolplayers
Science For Girls
Sintemu
Sparkle in Grey
Syclops
Twine
Wrnlrd

Compilations / Mixes
Birth Certificate
Grand Cru 2008
Impala Eardrums
Little Things
Magnetism, That Electricity
Muting the Noise
Muzyka Voln

EPs
Ateleia / Curtis
Audion
Bristle Weather
Franco Cangelli
Centreless
Collections of Colonies...
Dead Leaf Echo
Fovea Hex
Gulls
Hess / Tilmann
Liles & Fovea Hex
Adam Marshall
Mochipet
Mux Mool
Neptune
Andre Obin
Melissa St. Pierre
Prolyphic / Reanimator
Sceneslow
Skugge & Stavöstrand
Starting Teeth
Agnes Szelag
Tonight
DINTF 4

Melissa St. Pierre: Specimens
Radium / Table of the Elements

The rounded, flowing, and permeable character of Specimens' cover organisms are in direct contrast to the EPs' eight miniatures which are dominated by the jagged and hard-edged clatter of prepared piano and percussion (the piano's strings, hammers, and dampers are all peppered with objects during the EP). In this debut collection, Melissa St. Pierre's electronically-enhanced music invites the label “musique mécanique,” so suggestive is it of a mechanical orchestra with all its pistons firing. The opening “figure” sounds as if objects are being hurled against the piano strings in an attempt to derail the instrument's ponderous melody while the second anchors clockwork ostinato patterns with a deathly drum pound. The third is rambunctiously funky in a scrap-heap sort of way, while the frenzied fourth threatens to teeter completely out of control. Listeners obsessed with categorizing will have a tough time with Specimens; being so genre-defying, St. Pierre's seventeen-minute set comes close to carving out its own unique niche. Had Dadaists and Futurists assembled in a Paris apartment one evening in the 1920s and augmented the host's altered piano with junkyard noise-makers, the sonic results might have sounded very much like Specimens.

June 2008