1 at the magical hour when is becomes if 10:10
2 desert-tide 03:47
The electronic music by British composer Simon Cummings is a synthesis of extremes. His first CD release, Triptych, May/July 2009, composed in memory of his late father, had at its centre a large-scale noise study, glittering & abrasive, enclosed by two shorter & softer movements, their restraint & delicacy akin to that of ambient music. While his second release, The Stuff of Memories, was occupied by more hauntological concerns, Cummings’ digital release the Ceiling stared at me but i beheld only the Stars returned to these extremes, pitting them against each other in a protracted transition from noise to pitched material.
These sonic poles are heard in more delicate vein in Cummings’ new release, a digital EP presenting two works composed in June 2010. The shorter of the two, desert-tide, takes a gentle journey through a small, noise-based landscape. Although redolent in sound of both the sea & shifting sands, the title actually has alternative meanings in mind: ‘desert’ as in to abandon; ‘-tide’ a reference to the suffix denoting a (usually) sacred period of time.
By contrast, at the magical hour when is becomes if focuses entirely on pitches, juxtaposing them in clouds & clusters ever in flux, drifting, dissipating & coalescing within a relatively narrow sonic space. Taking its starting point from a macro photograph of a sheet of ice, the 10-minute piece is a shimmering, ambient celebration of things imagined (the ‘if’ of the title; as opposed to things real, that which ‘is’).
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