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Domenico Sciajno, "The d&b album, featuring: do shine'o & prinsjan" 01. cascocity domenico sciajno: real time computer processing. recorded may 17th & 20th 2002 at steim studio, amsterdam. |
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"The d&b album" is the first re-drum & re-bass album from the electronic duo Domenico Sciajno and Gert-Jan Prins. They are both wellknown in the world of experimental electronic music, and released cd's on Erstwhile, Fringes, and Grob. On this album Prins' analog shake-pulses and sweeps are directly plugged into Sciajno's specific powerbook esthetics and vice versa. As a whole, the five pieces on this adventurous cd form a precision-combination of sharp computer energy, rocking selfmade electronics, and fluid music recombination-technics, creating a grinding-spatial-musical concept, which by times reminds of Shine'o's & Prinsjan's rhithmic and playtechnical backgrounds on drums and double bass. ReViews: Unless you're living in some parallel universe where ruffneck glitch anthems pack Dalston dancefloors, Sciajno and Prins do not by any stretch of the immagination create the drun 'n' bass suggested by the album title, although their work allude to more populist forms. There's plenty to enjoy over the album's five tracks. Prins's homemade electronics and Sciajno's fidgety computer processing create an extraordinary assymetric momentum, arhythmic yet somehow pulsing and direct, particularly on "Cascocity", wich sounds like a radioactive boulder rolling down a hill full of Geiger counters. "Tablerock" is heightened and compressed Chain Reaction-style Techno, a complex grid of electric clicks, with distressed drones and frequencies modulations billowing and multiplying within. (Keith Moliné, The Wire, February 2004) For The D&B Album Domenico Sciajno (pictured opposite) and Gert-Jan Prins bill themselves in time-honoured DJ style as "Do shine'o" and "Prinsjan", and indeed there are plenty of real woofer-fucking grooves on the opening "Cascocity"though they're often buried under piles of digital clutter. The outstanding recording, made at Amsterdam's STEIM in 2002, contains plenty of par-for-the-course ultra high frequencies, white noise screes and the like, plus Prins' trademark mangled TV and radio manipulations, but is remarkably listenable (for me at least). The five pieces each have a strong sense of structure and direction, from the serpentine anti-dub of "Diamonds will do" via the thudding motoric pulsing (high and low) of "Tablerock" to the vicious, rumbling roughing-up of snatches of FM radio on "Vinexology". Unlike the Bosetti album discussed above, listening to this one through headphones is a dumb idea; this one's for all the family. Unless Santa gave it you for Christmas, you'll have to get it as a New Year present, if such a thing exists. Great way to start the year, too. Happy New 2004 to everyone at Bowindo: I can't wait for the next instalment. (Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic, January 2004) Improvisation musicians do listen to popmusic, techno and drum & bass, and some of them adopt a music style and pretend that they are doing the same thing. The Vacuum Boys for instance is such a band, pretending to be a real rock group, but in return just use powerbooks, guitars and electronics. Maybe it's there that Gert-Jan Prins, electronic specialist for the Vacuum Boys, got the idea to do a drum & bass album, with Domenico Sciajno. Sciajno plays real time computer processing and Prins the electronics and fm/am modulations. Despite the title, this music has nothing to do with drum and bass. It's an album filled with rhythms, cracklings,modulations, which indeed move over the entire sound spectrum - much low end and much high end -, just like drum & bass does, but this is high improvisation at work here. Prins sets the sounds, by twitching, turning and hitting his circuits and dailing his radio knobs, while Sciajno receives the sounds and twists the computer knobs up and distorts the whole thing a bit further. Well made improvised music that fits along the lines of labels such as Erstwhile and Grob, for those who take improvised music a bit futher. (Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly) 'The d&b album' is a glitch fest that offers passing reference to drum and bass – only really the title. On processing, electronics and fm/am Scianjo and Prins produce some vibrant electronica. 'Cascocity' shows the way with a combination of squeaks, scrapes and electro shlushes with some drum-like figures that builds and then chops, a futzy glitch rhythm with sqkyscrtchs in the second half. It is going to read oddly, but we continue in 'Stonone' passing from high tones with slowly developing soft sounds (cycles scrape hiss buzz) that starts to change as crackle and radio build, sweeps of tones, tweets, puttering – active and quite driving, almost noisey, crackle propelled. Domenico Sciajno e Gert-Jan Prins, rispettivamente "real time computer processing" ed "electronics, fm/am modulations", che realizzano un'opera molto fisica e dinamica: spruzzi e sbrotti di computer liberati come alte maree percussive da minimal techno essiccata e costipata (Cascocity, Tablerock), crescendo che invadono il territorio acustico per accumulazione (Vinexology, la bellissima Stonone) e pause meditative che dietro una sommessa matematica nascondono del jazz (Diamonds Will Do). La profonda sensibilità pop e la matrice "rock" che emergono prepotentemente tra le righe di questo bellissimo album ne fanno un disco consigliato non solo a chi segue e ama le diverse figliolanze di Ikeda ma anche a quanti solitamente frequentano territori distanti come la cosiddetta IDM e persino il noise rock, luoghi ai quali i due sembrano "naturalmente" portati e nei quali, mutati gli strumenti, si ritroverebbero quasi d'incanto (8). (Stefano I. Bianchi, BlowUp, November 2003) |
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