Busy Microbes: Playing
Rural Colours
When presented with a release that combines the efforts of two artists, the reviewer's natural inclination is to watch for traces of each participant's signature. The urge is especially strong when Busy Microbes involves an artist whose work is particularly well-known to this reviewer, with Katie English's Isnaj Dui releases having been covered in these pages for more than a decade. If Nick Edwards' Ekoplekz output is less familiar to these ears, it's easy to imagine the impact he had on the material when only two creators are involved.
Playing, the forty-seven-minute debut release from the pair under the Busy Microbes name, shows the two make a good fit; each enhances the other's contributions, and the evidence at hand shows they share more than a mere affinity for one-word track titles. Though they've never met in person, each is an avowed admirer of the other's work and consequently the collaborative process advanced smoothly once it got underway during the mid-year UK-wide lockdown. Sound materials were sent back and forth, with synths, acoustic instruments, and treatments of varying kinds applied to the pieces as the two assembled them one bit at a time.
Stylistically, the recording would be slotted into electronic and electroacoustic categories, though faint hints of dub and even techno also surface. It's an album of strong contrasts where it's not unusual for a transporting ambient creation to be followed by a squelchy slab of electro. Aptly titled, “Creep” slithers into view as a reverb-drenched exercise in haunted ambient scene-painting, English's signature flute audible within the mix. If “Burst” sees the two delving into acid-electro with the deftness of a Luke Vibert, the driving pulsations of “Tap” suggest commonalities with an artist like Alva Noto or label like Raster-Media.
As “Blob” animates signature elements from English's toolbox with a snappy electro-beat, the sound details align themselves separately to each collaborator. In “Hop” too, their individual contributions can be identified when her flute phrases glide across an insistent groove one presumes was fashioned by Edwards. Of course it's never entirely clear who's responsible for what on a given production, though the flute playing is clearly English's.
Track titles weren't randomly determined, with settings such as “Cloud” and “Pulse” making good on their names. “Valhalla” does too, with this serene ambient reverie alluding in dreamlike fashion to the majestic hall described in Norse mythology. Speaking of titles, the choice for the album itself is effective. Certainly there's playfulness aplenty in the ten instrumentals, with the impression created of kindred spirits who derive great pleasure from bringing unusual music into being pooling their talents. While it's easy in most tracks to pinpoint the English and Edwards elements in play (“Crystal” and “Swing,” to cite two examples), the album registers as a collaboration in the truest sense when no track sounds like the product of only one of the two participants.January 2021