Philip Samartzis - Residue (Dorobo, 1998)

1 Bois Noir
2 Coeur de France

Quiet yet forceful, soft yet sudden, the collection of sound artist Philip Samartzis' early work is a complex palate of soundscaped experience. Residue is a vision of the known made unfamiliar and the obvious made sublime, as field recorded materials fade in and out between layers of electronic acoustica. Quiet recordings of small sounds and broken vocals give way suddenly to deep, full walls of noise, while at other times the haunting conversations play through thin, windy analog sweeps.

At times, rhythms are present, but these suddenly break down and the sonic narrative is reduced to a resonating formlessness. These are the kinds of experiences and moods documented in Residue. The dance between elements of Residue is subtle. Some sounds are only present while listening actively, and it is difficult to determine whether many of these sounds were birthed in the field or in the studio.

This interplay grounds Residue, giving it a sense of transient place and an organic feel where often electronic music has none. Also, while the machines are clearly not the motivating factor of Residue, they play a role so central that each composition is more than a mere selection of recorded sounds played to an ambient soundtrack. Residue does nothing if not well, and the execution matches in all ways the depth of its expression.
All Music Guide

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Document 02 - Sine (Dorobo, 1995)

1 Ryoji Ikeda - Radio-Range 0:34
2 Ryoji Ikeda - Zone 3 2:54
3 Ryoji Ikeda - Zone 4 7:24
4 Ryoji Ikeda - Zone 1 7:56
5 Dumb Type - Water 2:35
6 Dumb Type - Love / Sex 7:36
7 Dumb Type - Preamble (For Silence) 6:07
8 Yoshio Ojima - Postscript (For Silence) 5:27
9 Satsuki Shibano & Yoshio Ojima - Caresse 2éme Partie 18:39
10 Satsuki Shibano - "Mots D'Amour" 4:45

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Darrin Verhagen - Hydra (Dorobo, 2000)

1 Prelude [012 Particulate] 9:23
2 Carnage 5:59
3 Aftermath / H2SO4+F2 Remixed 7:25
4 Sirens 4:39
5 Seduction: Asphyxia 9:40

Well-known for his work as Shinjuku Thief/Filth, Darrin Verhagen was commissioned to create the soundtrack to a Chunky Move dance production, and has released the resulting material as Hydra, a limited edition EP on the Australian Dorobo label. A quiet snowfall of digital noise, Hydra is best experienced through headphones. Combining remixed elements from both his previous solo album, Soft Ash, and label-mate Alan Lamb's Night Passage, Verhagen's work on this EP is nearly subsonic: ultra-minimal blips and rumblings with delicate, scratchy ambient atmospherics, only occasionally bursting into barrages of full-on noise. A nice addition to the Dorobo catalogue...
Brainwashed

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Alan Lamb - Night Passage (Dorobo, 1998)

1-1 Night Passage (24:51)
1-2 Last Anzac (12:54)
1-3 Meditation On SPring 8 (12:11)

Alan Lamb's compositions from telegraph wires is one of the more powerful examples of long wire music. Unlike wire composers Ellen Fullman or Paul Panhuysen, Lamb uses large outdoor installations and the natural wind currants to gather his original recordings, which he then assembles in the studio to create his extended pieces. Night Passage and Last Anzac both use the Faraway Wind Organ, a ten-mile stretch of abandoned telegraph wires that Lamb found and purchased in Western Australia in the mid-1970s. Night Passage is very dramatic, using crashes of metal on metal, the crackling of the telegraph poles, and enormous reverberation to create an organic but stormy sense of the wild Australian outback. Last Anzac retains the reverberation, but has very few of the metallic events that punctuate Night Passage, concentrating more on the drones created by the wires as they are blown about in the wind. "Meditation on Spring 8" was played on a wind organ built for a Japanese festival celebrating the opening of the SPring 8 Synchotron, a huge electron accelerator built in Kobe. Lamb briefly discusses the uniqueness of each wind organ, and one can hear this difference in this recording. The Meditation is quieter, more harmonious, bringing out the natural harmonics of the long wires. Lamb plays the wind organ with a bamboo bow, but below the drones one can hear the water from a typhoon that struck the area around the festival, drying on the wires. All three pieces on this album use the wind and wires to communicate a majesty that is difficult to achieve only using studios and electronics. These qualities make Lamb's pieces outstanding examples of a music that seeks to plays on a connection with nature, the decaying manmade infrastructure, and contemporary sound art.
All Music Guide

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Alan Lamb - Night Passage Demixed (Dorobo, 1998)

2-1 #13 (Ryoji Ikeda Remix) (8:02)
2-2 Kyros (Thomas Köner Remix) (9:53)
2-3 Fragmented (Lustmord Remix) (19:12)
2-4 Untitled 1/96 (Bernhard Günter Remix) (20:19)

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Alan Lamb - Primal Image (Dorobo, 1995)

1 Primal Image (16:52)
2 Beauty (29:33)

Deux drones dont le matériel de base est l'enregistrement de lignes téléphoniques balancées par le vent...

Recorded between 1981 and 1988, Primal Image is a recording of repetitive, gradually shifting frequencies with no other accompaniment to dampen the effect.
All Music Guide

These tracks were constructed in 1988 ("Primal Image") and 1986 ("Beauty") as a series of segments averaging several minutes each, with transitional overdubs at the seams, and with heavy use of EQ for harmonic balance and noise reduction. About 20 hours of source material was recorded using contact microphones on telephone wires over a cumulative period of 10 days in November 1981 ("Primal Image") and April 1983 ("Beauty").
Alan Lamb

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