Review of Field [12k2039]

Boomkat (UK)

Dan Abrams’ Shuttle 358 is responsible for one of our favourite electronic albums of the early 21st century – 2000’s ‘Frame’ – a masterpiece of Ambient music that recalls everything from Brian Eno to SND. Not the most prolific of artists, Abrams’ has only had a handful of releases credited to Shuttle 358 in the intervening years, so it’s a treat to see him back with a new full length for Taylor Deupree’s 12k.

Effectively a comfort blanket of chords and gossamer timbres held together with fizzing filaments, Field extends Abrams’ beautiful signatures into more diverse terrain, working with ostensibly redundant sonic data – the sound of CPU’s booting up, dying, coughing – and the inherent grain and colour of early DSP algorithms – to creates vivid, living and breathing imaginary spaces.

These unpredictable digital behaviours suggest a ghost in the machine, a rarified personal spirit that perfuses the arrangements with an emotive mutability, diffused thru their midnight, jazz-wise hazy maze of fractured rhythms in a way that resonates deftly  with his earliest gestures.

In a sense, Abrams is like a digital candle flickering at the core of Shuttle 358, quietly catalysing the atmosphere in myriad, microscopic chain reactions that shift across the ears, emulating imaginary space and teasing our 6th sense of perception with uncanny, but never invasive incision.

If you’re into SND, Jan Jelinek, or The Remote Viewer – this one’s well worth checking out.

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