Doron Sadja: all sounds (“10-track digital landscape”)
Starting with a gush of acoustic viciousness – although of the “relatively harmonic” species – and ending with the Basinski-in-the-house-of-mirrors idealism of the final track, Sadja presents a new work after 2012’s Residuals on Shinkoyo. Different facets, often bewitching sonorities – extremely pure or majestically decaying – scattered among heterogeneous episodes, the virtue being that of clever conciseness and brilliant elaboration of the surrounding materials when the construction might appear too simplistic at first (as in “Two”, where a draggingly unmemorable melody is gradually surrounded and submerged by massive slabs of distorted winds and emphatic electronic discharges). Either by chiseling the air via the apposition of antipodean frequencies (“Three”) or letting us savor the sauce of a chordal substrate (“Six”), the composer – a specialist in installations, and it shows – throws in minuscule pinches of aural comfort (well, for disciplined ears at least) that permit a vague familiarity to grab hold of the attention. Trouble and approachability always manage to pacifically coexist, on occasion happily married inside succinct chapters of concentrated stimulation (the magnificently inclined crunch-and-hum of “Eight”). A sense of attainment enlightens even the apparently secondary tracks, a remarkable balance between diversities achieved without manifest effort. And it never sounds humdrum: that’s the really good news.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 