The magic of disappearance, New York sound artist Scott Konzelmann seems beholden to it. He constructs Frankensteinian structural objects out of junkyard crumbs and trifles, and strafes them to functional loudspeakers such that an array of frequencies are compressed into sibilant static and a glut of wearing metallic drones. Much to his dismay - or, one suspects, pleasure - these analogue tapes were later found maimed by moisture, which brought about various drop-outs and print-throughs, disfiguring and all but destroying the work.
All well and good, however, as Konzelmann makes this disappearance into a technique that brings a satisfying buzz of freshness to the project. It begins geometric and rational in its forms, with subtle varieties of color. Owing to the 'unhappy accident' that wrought its body like some sort of shock wave, though, its surface is also swayed seductively, with ghostly tremors that whistle like a distant call of sirens, and open up a energy of fission and rupture that continues to mark the proceedings.
Konzelmann is also occasionally found back on his heels in a way that proves productive. Rather than go straight for the jugular, he loosens his grip, stridently letting the material slip through his fingers, seeing where it ripples with potential, and builds out from there. It results in an orbital journey through space and time. Certain pieces are barely there, drifting wraithlike through angular chromium edges. These then undergo aural shocks and surprises that bring them further out of the background into more elaborate territories, where the sound is that of a planet coalescing from unstable clouds of cosmic gas. Finally pieces shoot forward as a multilayered and fathomless strata of loops and low end drones encrusted with residues of aeons, ancient, all but fossilized. The development is thus characterized by a certain juddering drama, as it mutates and evolves at a consistent yet thrilling rate. In continually aiming off to the side, not directly at his own good, in ensnaring and being himself ensnared by this process of disappearance, thus showing some artistry and imagination along the way, Konzelmann has replaced one unhappy accident with a decidedly more endearing other.
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