What is ChipShop? According to the Internet, ChipShop is: (1) a hamlet in England; (2) the name of a fish and chips restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn; (3) a company whose aim is to shrink the biological and chemical laboratory in order to bring lab-on-a-chip systems into daily laboratory life at a reasonable cost; and (4) a group of Swedish and Irish musicians devoted to improvisational electroacoustic music.
The CD Protocol is a product of the last definition, but the shape-shifting nature of the group's name fits the music to a tee. Since 2007, this combination of Swedish and Irish improvisers has been exploring the gloriously expanding world of electroacoustic music, using a combination of instruments that includes percussion, saxophones, radio, electronics, computer, and clarinet. For this recording, the group includes the sui generis musician Toshimaru Nakamura, whose no-input mixing board is changing the electroacoustic landscape, and indeed the landscape of music altogether.
The two tracks on the CD were recorded in Dublin in October 2009 on subsequent days. Each piece clocks in at around twenty-five minutes, and there's a gorgeous sense of space and expansion throughout, with the two performances creating a natural flow of sounds that emerge and develop organically. "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime" is an ambient environment full of shimmering atmospherics and ominous under-rumblings, a rich panoply of sounds that keep the listener's ears on high alert. There's serrated rhythms, electronic screams, saxophone spluttering, and long, unrelenting high pitches that create a sonic bed for other sounds to bounce off. It's a beautiful use of space, a sensitive use of timing, and a precise exploration of that which lies on the edge of noise.
"The Man Upstairs" is an equally compelling aural panorama. Like the first piece, this work explores of the art of the drone and creates powerful sonics throughout, including ominous clunks and startling thuds and mysterious bells that come from no recognizable church, plus hisses and chimes and blurts and smudges. It's a unique, fertile world, teeming with distinctive fields of sound.
It's a tremendous pleasure to give oneself over to these new musical galaxies, to allow the environment they create to enter into the cells and spark the imagination. ChipShop's combination of the organic and inorganic offers wide-open adventures that expand the electroacoustic universe and teach human ears to hear the world anew.
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