HUIB EMMER – Green Desert

Z6

According to Huib Emmer – a Dutch composer I was not acquainted with until yesterday, henchman among others of Lukas Simonis who now publishes this CD on his own label – Green Desert should evoke visions of urban bleakness and sense of forsakenness. Using a miscellany of sources, a laptop and electronics, Emmer does manage to raise some degree of hell, though not ferociously as certain noise-mongers do. The representational processes mostly describe a fuzzy disarray, washes of unrecognisable fluids combining with more incisive frequencies to lead the unsuspecting headphone-wearing victim astray. Everything looks OK to that point, the music offering several levels of stimulating information to the brain and, in general, sounding rather personal. Regrettably, there are a few instances in which the whole steers very clearly to a sort of hefty industrial techno replete with cold – and ultimately insipid – square beats; even the quality of the sounds seems to diminish its order of magnitude quite decisively in those moments. It probably works better live, but these “variations” ruin an otherwise interesting record.