If you paid attention, my involvement in today’s electronica – excepting the bona fide masters of the game – has been gradually dwindling, and that’s being benevolent. Put in direct (and often reiterated) words, thousands of records sound exactly the same – thanks, laptops – and selected past reviews of mine have caused important labels of the sector to stop sending promos this way – thanks, sincerity. I vividly remember Doron Sadja’s A Piece Of String, A Sunset (A.D. 2003) on 12k as an album of subtle nuances and clear-cut individuality; nine years later, Sadja is back with something that, upon repeated listens, can be called “stirring” in some of its components but, contrarily to his previous solo CD, uses features from sonic specimens that already exist (in that sense there’s a honest “indirect” admission on the very press release, which quotes Fennesz, Drumm and several other “luminaries” of the area).
The four tracks do not display extravagant complications. The most intense, even touching ones are the first two, both defined by a slumberous start and a incremental growth into a monolithic superimposition of composite synthetic layers contaminated by distortion, but still preserving the x-ray of an elementary harmony. Elsewhere, fragments of equally simple melody might induce someone to attempt an improbable parallelism with certain products from the Cluster/Roedelius chain. This sensation lasts just a few minutes, though. The lingering feel throughout is that of a refined soundtrack, a work where the compositional values reside in the verification of how symmetric luminescences and long-lasting filaments achieve expressiveness rather than in an authentic construction. It is much better to appreciate the finer details via headphone, for a room tends to add a measure of flatness to the whole. Which would be unjust after all, since this writer’s experience considers Sadja more seriously than a lot of the ever-fecund parasites infesting this garden.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 