Articles
2010 Artist Picks
Francesco Tristano
Albums
36
Access To Arasaka
Aeroplane Trio
Christian Albrechsten
Gilles Aubry
Andreas Bick
Wil Bolton
Caroline
Chaim
Scott Cortez
Dead Voices On Air
Margaret Dygas
F. Gerard Errante
Seren Ffordd
Field Rotation
Marcus Fischer
The Ghost of 29 Megacycles
Tania Gill
Gord Grdina Trio
Herion
Hummingbird
Ironomi
Yoshio Machida
Machinefabriek / Liondialer
Phil Manley
Matta
Mem1
me:mo
Miko
Momus
Moshimoss
Roger O'Donnell
orchestramaxfieldparrish
Cédric Peyronnet
Resoe
Danny Saul
Dirk Serries
Shedding
Clive Tanaka y su orquesta
Robert Scott Thompson
Two People In A Room
Undermathic
Wires Under Tension
Clive Wright
Compilations
Joachim Spieth Selected 6
Playing with Words
Reconstruction of Fives
20 Centuries Stony Sleep
EPs
Balmorhea
Clara Moto
d_rradio
Deepgroove
Kyle Bobby Dunn
Fear Falls Burning
Hammock
ptr1
Quiroga
Sawako
Access To Arasaka: void();
Tympanik Audio
void();, the latest Access To Arasaka salvo from Rochester, NY-based Rob Lioy and follow-up to 2009's Oppidan, scatters sixteen cryptically titled tracks—just try to say “kill_recorder=$c1,” “n->m_pkthdr.len,” “bpf_u_int32,” and “sys.argv[1:]” aloud—across its fifty-five-minute playing field. It's uncompromisingly computer-based music whose squiggly electronica has clear roots in the style Autechre birthed during its LP5 - EP7 period. Given its dystopic and futuristic character, it hardly surprises that void(); would take its inspiration from the history and, ahem, future of system hacking, and it's also fitting that it's pitched as an “open invitation for the listener to imagine what a computer might attempt to comprehend when its system is under such an attack.” Even so, Lioy brings the precision of a surgeon's eye and hand to the tracks' hyperactively ricocheting beats and the whirr and click of their writhing, synapse-firing electronics.
Don't, however, let its alienating song titles fool you into thinking that void(); is without musical merit. On tracks such as “syslog_ident” and “n->m_pkthdr.len,” Lioy undeniably does drench his material with a non-stop array of scalpel-sharp effects and textures, but he also balances it with some degree of clear-headed beat patterning and even an occasional melody. Overlook the inhuman title and a track like “[overwrite_ctr]” proves to have a human heart beating within it, and even, believe it or not, an emotional melodic core too. Like some fading signal from distant ancestors, a gentle melody calls out from the ice-cold center of “term/echo” before being sucked back into the cybernetic maze of dial tones and electrical cross-currents. A sombre undercurrent runs throughout the album, as if to suggest that the future, whatever technological marvels it may bring, will still feel in some ways like a paradise lost nostalgic for a more innocent era that can never be recaptured. One might think, then, of void(); and its brooding dose of IDM-for-cybernauts as amounting to a requiem-to-be of sorts.
January 2011