Ambientrance (US)

Spontaneously created at Montreal’s Micro_Mutek 2, “Cascone + Chartier + Deupree” (21:37) exhibits an overlapping variety of the minuscule forms the high-tech triad has been exploring (indeed creating their own audio niche) jointly and separately. Experience vaporous drones, purely electronic pulsations, clicky rhythmic streams, simmering hotbeds of swirly soundgranules, soft expanses of mystery (and thankfully, no crowd chatter, or drunkenly bellowed requests…”Decisive forms! Decisive forms!!!”). I can’t really point to who’s “playing” which parts as, of course, this isn’t so much garden-variety “music” as it is spaciously arranged tableaus of digitally spawned esoterica. The three are masters of their craft, stirring up intriguing evolutions of obtuse sonics.

Cascone’s “New World Rising (New Density Mix)” (4:41) does display a new density… thicker throbbing murk emits fractured gleams and spattery pips, all ringing out like some alien communiqué. A deep monotone drones into Chartier’s “Afterimage”, decorated with barely perceptible chiming activities. In slow movements, the depths ripple, fade and return, glimmering warmly, if vaguely. Deupree loops cyclic speckled haze throughout “4+2_Stil Live”, setting up a hypnotic rise and fall which attracts more energetically charged atoms, then dimming toward its conclusion.

Before you listen to After, you may consider your own appreciation for odd, low-level micronoise, because there are 47 minutes filled with such indefinite soundscapes, though they are forged by the digital trinity of “Cascone + Chartier + Deupree”, so it’s of course thoughtfully rendered… a respectful B from me. On 12k.