Hammer & Tongs

7,50 € VAT included

In stock

Improvisation Recorded At The Royal Derby, Melbourne, 2nd April 2004
Are: Adam Süssmann, Matthew Earle

“Hammer and Tongs: tools for opposite actions, one brutal and the other delicate. This CD by Stasis Duo plays on both terms, as the sine waves it contains can be felt as both aggressive and harmless, delicate and harsh. Adam Süssman and Matthew Earle use “emptied samplers”, i.e. samplers without samples, creating their own sounds through sinewave test tones and internal feedback. The technique was pioneered by Sachiko M in the late ‘90s. While her work (especially in its early stages, see the album Sine Wave Solo) tends to elevate sine waves to the status of pure sound art, something to be listened to in an ivory tower, these guys approach it with more humour and less respect. Presented as a continuous, untitled 47-minute piece split into 12 indexes, the music is anything but pure sine waves or sustained feedback. Süssman and Earle tweeze, twitch, fold and break into shards the high-pitched ear-splitting whines and low rumbles. At times it sounds as if you were in the laboratory for a hearing exam and the operator was getting a bit too creative with his test tones. In other places the music takes us back to the early days of electronic music, thanks to a few unaltered bleeps slipping through the cracks. Comfortable listening this is not, but Stasis Duo manages to give a certain personality to a form of music other artists have presented very coldly in the past.” FC