SHUTTLE358 "OPTIMAL.LP" (12K1005)

to translate languages, paste text here: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

---

AMBIENTRANCE (US)
optimal.lp draws heavily from the microscopic and ostensibly souless world of digital electrons, giving them loose structure, warmth and life by way of stunningly arranged sound patterns. In this most impressive debut, shuttle358 (a.k.a. Dan Abrams) has constructed a definitive ambient/electronic blend. For further insights, see this month's interview with Taylor Deupree of 12k.

Generating its own bio-mechanical atmosphere, a hazy, rhythmic echosystem opens swarm, to be joined by thinly hovering rays, muted notes and occasional insectoid electronic accompaniment. Sweeping over bug-like sound patterns and a bed of static, slowly in... casually drones in a straight line, with further accents from smooth bell-tones. Airy synthflow adorned by a faint shuffle, and slightly disruptive microbursts is next (1:49).

Echoing with self-replicating patterns and just a bit of grit, gone goes peacefully amidst a radiant electron mist, overlain with synth strata. A thin, computerized techno-tribal beat penetrates the free-floating dronecloud of optimal, which simply basks in its lovely radiation field. A distorted voice twice questions the listener of floops which proceeds to sing a story of abstract electronics which pulse, drone, warble and waft oh-so-beautifully.

Beginning as an evolving sonic protoplasm, emergent eventually spawns small beats which rise from its densely simmering miasma. A cyclic techno-mechanical backdrop is draped with lushly swelling synth sheets in system (8:35), which receives additional visitations from electrically warbling fly-bys, muffled notes and precise, tinny syncopation. From a random gel, tank grows into something a bit more active, as its dully chiming notes begin to cascade and multiply in a gorgeously geometric soundsculpture; eventually the form suffers entropy, fading away and falling apart, though achingly lovely all the while.

Operating as shuttle358, Dan Abrams proves that the "cold" mechanics of computerized sound can be given distinct warmth and beauty. optimal.lp absolutely radiates with a dazzling blend of precision and passion, evoking a hearty 9.4. Seriously, you'd best be getting over to the 12k website and getting your copy of this masterpiece; it's limited to 500 copies...

ALTERNATIVE PRESS (US)
dan abrams' debut album of hypnotic ambient tracks employs "experimental methods of software scripting" which you might expect from a bright young guy recording in california in 1999. computer-based it may be, but the digital music on optimal.lp practically glows with warmth and teems with fascinating - and sometimes abrasive - textures. and the subtle melodies will move you to rethink your biases against electronic music's "coldness" (not that there's anything wrong with coldness, per se). - dave segal

MIXER (US)
dan abrams' shuttle358 cut on the ultra keen 12k compilation .aiff sorta stuck out from the rest of the material; where labelhead taylor deupree, komet and other contributors were on the mechanical click side of experimental electronic music, shuttle358 was a billow of warm smoke slithering along the ceiling in simple, soothing waves of sound. optimal.lp bears that first appearance out, illustrating that he wasn't a fluke who couldn't deliver the goods. take UFOrb, strip it down to its skivvies, and you have the aesthetic that permeates shuttle358's tensely dreamy music; it is like an hour-long backrub that knows exactly where to turn up the pressue to induce total relaxation. the undulating tones of the murky "floops" knead slowly over teh whole of your body, building slowly in intensity so that the hard bass drip of "emergent" doesn't jar. like a good masseuse, optimal.lp doesn't perform for the sake of attention of seduction, but simply because it can. similarly, you will feel a lot better after a session with shuttle358. - heath k. highnight

URBAN SOUNDS (UIS)
Shuttle358 is the nom de disque of computer music composer Dan Abrams, and his recent optimal.lp is all kinds of firsts. To start with, it's the first release on Taylor Duepree's 12k label not by, or in collaboration with, Duepree himself. It's also Abrams' first full-length release -- the LP follow-up to his appearance on the 12k new-artist sampler .aiff. It's the latter fact, combined with the next, that makes the album so astounding; optimal.lp is one of the first instances of properly digital ambient that manages to balance the deep atmospheres of classic artists such as David Parsons, Robert Rich, and Brian Eno, with the recent hard disk malapropisms of Oval, Terre Thaemlitz, and Ryoji Ikeda, among others. Though Abrams' aesthetic can only be said to derive from these sources secondarily -- true to form, he's professed to little knowledge of them -- the effect is the same. Fusing warm, deep, enveloping synthetic textures with deliciously subtle digital fizzing and futzing, optimal.lp reinvents ambient as a music of place by shifting its context back, where it belongs, into the now -- the surging bitstream, for example, or the microscopic chipsets of the personal computer. Rather than regurgitate its contents, however, optimal.lp invokes the particularity of the evolving digital lifeworld by tapping into its peculiar hum, magnifying the specks of dust that cloud and cluster among the cleanroom components and finding in them a new kind of beauty.

The track titles tell part of the story -- "Next," "System," "Tank," "Slowly, In Refrigerated Environments" are meticulous and exacting. "Swarm," the lead track, pulls slowly together from alternating patterns of muted beeps and cycling static into a vast, undulating ecosystem of sound, with simple melodic figures providing a kind of optional point of relaxed concentration from which departures might be chartered. "Next" is a brief study in glitch, the textural properties of a single, unoccupied sound atom the basis for uncanny exploration. .aiff's "Gone" makes another appearance; having heard the track so many times on the compilation, it's a little jarring to hear it in another context, but it fits right in -- it remains one of Abrams' most inspired moments. As does the enchanting, onomatopoeic "Floops," which pairs a clean, delicate, slow-motion synth pattern with swelling tone-drones and spare, percussive texture-melodies that stutter about like the silvery perambulations of some just-hatched artificial lifeform. If classic ambient was a soundtrack to joss sticks and subjective introspection (which, of course, it wasn't), optimal.lp's backdrop is the agitated LED-spray of your digital EQ, the dance of pixels across a screen too vast to see in its entirety, but no less absorbing in fragment. Rating: 8 - sean cooper

VITAL WEEKLY (NL)
With this release 12K only seems back at their start: Shuttle 358 offers ambient upon first hearing (and for me 12K started out doing more ambient like releases but released also an excellent compilation AIFF with... eur modern electronica). Like it is suggested on the cover ("proper audio monitoring is recommended for listening") either headphone listening or really loud, is necessary to grasp the full idea of the music.

Shuttle 358, being one Dan Abrams, creates immense depths in his music, but he is carefull enough to avoid places of new age. The depths I'm speaking about are not just created by a bunch of effects, but also by the dynamic range: low is low and high (not very present I'd say) is high. Each track is sufficient long enough to form a good picture, short enough to be interesting and among them there's a strong variety. Besides the stacks of synths, Shuttle 358 uses these strange sounds in sampled fashion that get the odd ball per track rolling. Sometimes insect like, sometimes of a more obscure nature but definetly something odd.Good crossover between say anything on Hypnos and Rastermusic. And as usual with 12K, limited to 500 copies! (FdW)

VICE (US)
Taylor Deupree's 12k continues with its issues of superb electronics in the "Optimal.lp" from California's Shuttle358. Here computer music is harnessed and shaped into an at times ambient, at times more atmospheric soundscape.

THE WIRE (UK)
the all-on-one utility of the personal computer is evolving a new breed of software musicians/artists whose only contact with a keyboard is the one their mouse is connected to. born into screen consciousness and completely at home in the abstract creative space of binary code, these are the true bedroom geeks, the nerdy kids from down the road who whiled away their childhood in front of an amiga or an atari or an apple iie, goofing about with mods, adventure games and tracker music. shuttle358's dan abrams was probably one such kid.

the methods of digital composition are so second nature to him that his debut release on the new york-based computer music label 12k, exhibits the frank equanimity of someone who has spent years struggling to materialise the sounds in his head. ostensibly ambient music, optimal.lp combines the engulfing syntheic environments of early space musicians such as david parsons and robert rich with conerns altogether contemporary: the digital glitches of hard disk disruptions explored by terre thaemlitz, ryoji ikeda, christian fennesz and others. where those artists foreground digital production methods in the service of disjunction, however, abrams is after a re-synthesis. subtle and delicate, optimal.lp's lean, microscopic bitscapes return to the peculiar timbres of post-analogue sound an evocative sense of context and connection.

abrams is a student of packaging at los angeles's art centre college of design, a fact reflected in the elegant simplicity and organisation of his music. fashioned from essentially the same store of materials - thin drones, fm tones, sparking textures, mellifluous static - each of optimal.lp's nine tracks is a slightly shifted perspective on a curiously diverse whole too vast to be taken in all at once. "gone" and "tank" are discrete manifestations in space, tab-and-slot constructions that reveal their logic in the process of disassembly. they're also deceptively easy on the ears; abrams is most impressive in his ability to make the rough textures of digital detritus so plainly musical.

barely perceptible rhythms ripple the surface of a few of the tracks, as if the superabundance of electronic dance styles made anything more than a distant hi-hat fiture or an echoing kick pattern obvious and unnecessary. the connection is probably unintentional, however; abrams's spare beats work by diffraction, breaking up the space of the music to better distinguish its contours. optimal.lp manages to elude genre from start to finish, employing a poverty of means notable in the context of hybrid-happy electonica. it is remarkable in its expressiveness. - sean cooper.

XLR8R (US)
...california's dan abrams gives the 12k sound a smoothing over on shuttle358's optimal, taking the stripped rhythmics of chain reaction artists like monolake and dolloping them into truffles of cool richness... - heath k. higknight.