Creating music that’s like the soundtrack for a building-site documentary, sound artists Anne-F Jacques of Montreal and Kobe-based Canadian ex-pat Tim Olive use magnetic pickups and amplified rotating surfaces to generate industrial-style improvisations. It’s ironic that the work of players residing in two of the world’s most technologically sophisticated countries appears to symbolically reflect the grinding turbulence of an early Industrial Revolution factory, rather than twenty-first century high tech. Perhaps the intersecting crunches, crackles, and crumbles produced by the duo’s self-made and altered sound sources are an attempt to return to group-toil variants of the individual craftsmanship that characterized pre-Industrial Revolution manufacturing.
Another striking aspect of the program is how much acoustic sound occupies Jacques and Olive’s sound field. There may be vague suggestions of signal-processed rumbles on the first track and wave-form-like crackles and static on the second, lengthier one, but overall, as the equivalent textures of glass-breaking, jack-hammering and in-and-out-of-focus oscillations accelerate in volume, visions of a Thomas Edison-like back-shop work-bench crowd out thoughts of a sleek, sterile IBM-like research laboratory. Tooth Car’s first track ends with circular wheel-like rumbles, abruptly truncated. Is it quitting time or delivery time? The second track contains more mechanized allusions, ranging from soft-drink-bottle-like pops to assembly-line-like clatters and crunches. Eventually, the rumbles and buzzes become more distant and subtle as a final unvarying organ-like chord gives way to an allusion to more expansive space.
Recorded in two different locations, this CD’s sounds may be as harsh and relentless as any industrial process. But, intentionally or not, Jacques and Olive have coordinated their altered but up-to-date equipment to create a fundamental sound program, while simultaneously commenting on its excesses.
