CHEFKIRK – We Must Leave The Warren

Eh?

We’re all acquainted with how a no-input mixing board works, aren’t we? Since the early age of David Myers (aka Arcane Device) until Toshimaru Nakamura’s brilliantly subtractive business, the pluralities of ever-changing shapes, abysmal droning purrs and barely contained feedback spurts have gained a more or less official existence in our listening habits. Add to the short list of practitioners of this art the name of Roger H. Smith, who in We Must Leave The Warren presents four pieces of manipulated frequencies (two of the tracks are augmented by the use of a sampler). Nothing truly hot gets added to the familiar recipe, but what Chefkirk does is absolutely on average with the conduct of his acknowledged fellow moulders. The alternance of stabilized whirr (slowly growing in thickness and quivering, but immobile just the same) and convulsive zaps amidst aleatory sequences is utterly assimilable – and at times very beautiful to hear – throughout the 51 minutes of this disc, which needs to be played loud in order to extract its finest scents.