Phil Tomsett: Noise Print / The Acceptance Cycle
Fluid Audio

It's safe to say no other label packages its audio products as eccentrically as Fluid Audio. Designed by Daniel Crossley, Phil Tomsett's two-part Noise Print / The Acceptance Cycle, couples two plain CDs with an Ordnance Survey map of Great Britain (the area covered in the 1960 map I received, Salisbury), inside of which are snugly packed musty old photos on uncoated card stock, an aged page from a travel book, a postcard (mine shows Clark Gable), an antique colour slide, photo negatives, travel ticket, and B&W photo-prints. All such items are housed in a crinkly brown bag with a plastic label of Tomsett's name affixed to it and the package scented to amplify its rescued-from-the-attic feel. Given the labour involved in hand-assembling each item, it's understandable that the edition's limited to seventy copies.

As striking as the presentation is, it wouldn't mean much if the music wasn't special, but there's no cause for worry on that count. The UK-based Tomsett, who otherwise issues material under The Inventors of Aircraft name, is a supreme crafter of atmospheric electronic-ambient music, and the thirteen soundscapes he's spread across the two discs uphold that reputation. Tomsett helpfully provides preambles to bring clarity to the two parts, details that in no way detract from the listening experience. The idea behind Noise Print has to do with shadow selves and the different versions of ourselves that make up who we are. Beyond the self we present to the world, there are shadowy ones we don't share or only do with select individuals plus parts deeply buried that we struggle to identify and understand. One might think of Noise Print, then, as an aural, print-to-tape document of the deep state one might find oneself in when external noise falls away and one experiences moments of focused concentration and inner clarity.

At the outset, tremulous synths glimmer and gleam against a background of dive-bombings, the whole resembling some amplified audio record of unconscious mental activity. Gradually waves of dust and grime arise to smother the opening material and clear the the stage for the flickering transmissions of “Noise Print” and its gentle flow of scratchy, mangled sounds, material that could easily pass for an ambient simulation of a sleeping city faintly heard from a forest outside it. With the onset of “Ghost Version/Haydan,” we first plunge into a quietly convulsive zone before sailing out on a sea of Basic Channel-styled ambient smears and ripples. “No One Knows” presents four riveting minutes of celestial ambient, after which the engulfing “The closer you get, the scarier it is” pulls us into a comparatively ominous vortex. Pointing the way to the release's second half is the dynamic “Towards Acceptance,” a more welcoming expression whose lustrous, billowing tones soothe and uplift.

Conceived as a conclusion of sorts to his 2000 Fluid Audio release The Sound of Someone Leaving, The Acceptance Cycle follows the earlier one's focus on loss with a seven-part set exploring the stages one goes through to reach peace after experiencing trauma. A range of emotions is explored in the first six cycles, with the seventh intended as the peaceful resolution of the journey. The change in sound design from Noise Print to The Acceptance Cycle is immediately apparent in the keening strings that crash through “Cycle One,” the nightmarish effect reminiscent of screeching generated by subway cars. Ostensibly the second cycle, “The Acceptance Cycle” is less harrowing by comparison though no less epic in pitch; “Cycle Three” arrests the ear by punctuating its combustible string washes with siren-like wails in the background. The tone of “Cycle Six” is euphoric, the gesture perhaps meant as a harbinger of the towering final track.

February 2025