Articles
2011 Top 10s and 20s
Spotlight 4

Albums
Akhet
Cory Allen
Alva Noto
Aun
Bass Communion
Alexander Berne
Birds Passage / Rosado
The Black Dog
BNJMN
Ursula Bogner
Cokiyu
Steve Coleman
Cubenx
Mats Eilertsen
Elektro Guzzi
eleventhfloorrecords
Ben Fleury-Steiner
Golden Gardens
Goldmund
Thom Gossage
Steve Hauschildt
Helvacioglu & Pancaroglu
Illuha
Larkian & Yellow6
Clem Leek
Mamerico
Milyoo
Hedvig Mollestad Trio
Nao
Yann Novak
Sasajima & Hirao
Scissors And Sellotape
Ryan Scott
Till von Sein
Shaula
The Silent Section
Scott Solter
Spheruleus
Talkingmakesnosense
thisquietarmy
Anna Thorvaldsdottir
tINI
Tycho

Newly Issued
The Beach Boys

Compilations / Mixes
Deetron
Mike Huckaby
Radio Slave
Rebel Rave 2: Droog

EPs
Thavius Beck
Niccolò Bianchi
Falko Brocksieper
Alex Cobb & Aquarelle
Deru
Everything Is
Ed Hamilton
Hammock
Herzog
Oknai
SlowPitch
Tracey Thorn
Damian Valles

Cory Allen: Still
Quiet Design

Still, Cory Allen's follow-up to the early 2011 release Pearls and 2010's Hearing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Hears, would be as natural a fit for 12k as Allen's own Quiet Design, given that the release exudes the same kind of meditative ambiance and fine-tuned sensitivity to textural detail that are hallmarks of 12k's releases. True to form, Still feels very much as if time is standing, yes, still in the recording's four settings, such that, paradoxical though it might be, the album's material manages to exude static and developmental qualities in equal measure.

“Shutter Echo” introduces the album on somewhat of an alien note with the slow-motion swirl of cavernous whirrings, fuzz, flutter, and other grainy noises until the comfortingly familiar presence of an electric piano arrives in the form of sparse and meditative meander—the effect a little bit reminiscent of the way in which Robert Wyatt's piano humanizes Eno's ambient colourations on the opening piece of Music For Airports. The presence of what sounds like amplified vinyl crackle gives “Goodbye Ghost” a suitably spectral character, as if the ghosts of recordings past have been exhumed and re-awakened. That surface texture also resembles the kind of ambient ripples one hears at the seashore, which in turn lends the piece an open-air expansiveness that's present to a lesser degree on the other pieces. “Goodbye Ghost,” one of the two most densely textured settings, could pass for a processed field recording taken at an early morning harbour, where myriad creaks and rustlings meld into a muffled whole. Real-world sounds intrude to an even greater degree during “Ascension” when the overlapping bell tones of various clocks and the utterances of creatures overshadow the melodic elements. Still isn't without its darker moments, either, as shown by the second half of “Becoming” when the threat of an oncoming storm spreads itself across the track's droning flurries.

Throughout Allen's thirty-seven-minute collection, the material develops in accordance with a natural and fundamental logic, much like the development of an organism through time. There's an unhurried feel to the material as it moves through its mutating stages, and its generally relaxed drift induces a corresponding sense of calm and thus heightened receptiveness in the listener.

December 2011