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| If you find most experimental music to be too minimal for your tastes,
I'm pretty certain you've never heard anything on the Earsay label.
Never an outlet for dull or art-wanky compositions, Earsay hits a
new high with John Oliver's Icicle Blue Avalanche, one of
the most viscerally dramatic discs I've heard in quite a while. Working
with MIDI guitar, computer, keyboard and tape loops, Oliver has
crafted huge slabs of extremely solid music -- I can't wait to
listen to the title track's chaotic blend of prog-rock guitar and randomized
computer accompaniment on a surround-sound system. "Copper Flying"
is aptly described in Oliver's liner notes as "virtual metal" -- imagine
wandering
around, mildly intoxicated, inside the world's largest set of wind chimes. "Off the Edge" is a sonic storm of a different
type,
combining recorded weather effects and instrumental imitations thereof (or
at least
that's how it sounded to me) into one big seething maelstrom. Oliver's
most recent
works, "Noh 1" and "InDia", were my favorites -- the former an immersive
envelope
of techno-shamanistic sounds, the latter a starkly modern meditative work
with, as
the title suggests, an Eastern bias. If you're the type of person who
typically
dismisses experimental compositions as dull or self-indulgent, I strongly
encourage
you to approach Icicle Blue Avalanche with an open mind -- it's a work
of quality and conviction, and it's well worth your time.
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