Witching Hour (CLaudia, 2005)

1 P. Westbourne - Dawn Chorus 12:28
2 Un Ciego - Korogi Gate 3:00
3 Lau Nau - Keskellä Yötä 7:40
4 Tim Coster - Drop Time 4:13
5 Richard Francis - Night Fields: For Johnny Osbourne 8:04
6 Felicity Ford - Midnight Kitchen 8:04
7 Paintings Of Windows - Gilgit 6:57
8 Phil Dadson* - Sleep Trio 14:59

A collection of a wide variety of approaches to Field Recording (all made at night-time); processed computer ambiences, subtle collage, free improvisation with insects singing, contact recordings of rain, silent houses, kitchen activity, exotic holidays and troubled sleeping.
CLaudia

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Sam Hamilton - Low Hill (CLaudia, 2006)

01 Low Hill 9:30

Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Sam Hamilton works through various media, including groups such as City Peoples Farmers Music and Muffin Seeks Sunship, and film collaborations with Eve Gordon. But he's known mostly for his solo recordings, of which the nine minute "Low Hill" is a fine example. Hamilton digitally edits recordings of busy, shuffling percussion and pinging guitar harmonics into a short suite loosely held together by low, abraded drones. All the action happens thanks to Hamilton's deft editing, as he cauterises little moments of static and smears them across the dashboard. Towards the end, he starts humming along absentmindedly, inserting the auteur's presence indelibly into the frame.
The Wire

Sam's CDR contains just one nine minute piece, for which he lists guitar, voice, computer and drums, and all of these instruments are to be recognized in this strange curious piece of computerized noise, guitar strumming and playing the cymbals. There is some sort of cut-up collage like elements to be discovered here, which reminded me of thefirst solo CDs of Dean Roberts. A nice mixture of glitch music,improvisation but also in a strongly composed manner.
Vital Weekly

Just under ten minutes of minimalistic fish slapping. It's funny how droney, small buzz laptopism can still be quite striking. While at times mellow, it's full of changes and varied instrumentation. Tense trebled free drums. High freq strobes. Guitar loops interchanging. Static bursts in tiny melody. Whispers of downtempo mouth trumpets xoring the jazzerblues. Levels of crank extending like a teenage robot on a tense day at the microchip hurler.

It's easy to say, "ah, yet another laptopper." and dismiss this, but I think the effects here are applied a little more wildly. Not bombastically, but with more emotional dynamics than a glacier's chemistry in action on a winter's day, which is what so typically passes as laptop sound art in the last few years especially.

I feel scratched. It's good to hear the young NZ experimental crowd continuing to push outward and keeping the NZ noise faith alive.
Foxy Digitalis

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Tim Coster - Star Mill (CLaudia, 2007)

1 Untitled
2 Untitled
3 Untitled

Cet album rassemblant trois morceaux de 37 minutes est sans doute l'une des meilleures réalisations de Tim Coster... Il utilise ici le laptop pour manipuler ses fields recordings, mais on peut entendre également entre autres sources: basse, ocarina, accordéon, cloches, harmonica, mbira, bouteilles, bols, et etc. Drones sublimes et calmes dans lesquels on s'immerge totalement....

Drone works seem to be plentiful these days. I've always had a difficult time estimating the relative size of our little community. It seems that as the years pass, the number of new projects grows geometrically, so one can only assume that the listener base undergoes a similar reaction. Digital audio software advances in a similar fashion, making the listener immediately into the performer with only a modicum of effort and investment. Online magazines, such as this one, serve more to measure the incalculable release schedule of bedroom labels than to further discourse on musical methodology. By writing this review, I've also made a seemingly fixed record of a limited audio document's existence. Strictly utilitarian, right? (And also with the faintest tinge of rabid consumerism. It affects us worse than most.) On bad days, complete pessimism overwhelms me as I contemplate the apparent futility in trying to document the scene or promote a release that most people will never hear (or care to hear) no matter what glowing terms spill across the telephone wire. But then, something like Star Mill shows up in my mailbox.

Possessing New Zealander citizenship should seem a cliché in this day in age for outsider music (are we still outsiders?), but here's yet another entry in what should be an invasion, Tim Coster. I'm under the impression that he's primarily a laptop performer, blending field recordings and other audio sources. I tend to associate that technique with glacial precision at its best, and sterile stillness at its nadir. ?Star Mill? feels a bit different. On this three-track, thirty-seven-minute excursion, we truly get the best of two competing aesthetics sophisticated digital and (at least the feel) of workman analog. As the opening breathless salvos roll in, the desired sound-realm could either be the murky oak forest hiding demonic familiars or the last moments of fried antiquarian hardware. If I stare at the cover art, I suddenly hear the creaking of the pictured waterwheel, along with the spectres floating above the broken floorboard into the ephemeral night. What makes this recording breath are the milliseconds of imperfections that break the digital gloss, turning it into something alive and fragile (and not just a preprogrammed exercise). Normally, I listen to subtle drone musics while working. Star Mill never fails to make me lose my concentration. Now, I need to get back to what I should be doing. Beyond recommended.

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