SCARCELIGHT RECORDINGS > releases > SLR33 |
return |
Accelera Deck. Sunstrings ep. CD
digital reissue edition available from - - - LATHELIGHT LTD - - -
Following on the heels of 2003's Ipsissima Vox, Accelera Deck (aka Chris Jeely) delivers a 30 minute ep of guitar feedback sonorities. In much the same way a split speaker created a fascinating "new" guitar sound, Jeely's digitally clipped guitar ponderings lend a unique character to his sound. At times the guitar oscillates freely, notes are bent and shaken, new clusters emerge, loops spiral out of control, feedback overwhelms...... + 33 minutes of music released on the 3rd day of the 3rd month with catalog number 33
01. Dross |: cover by Cataract Press |
Reviews |
Sunstrings ep is No. 11 for May 2004 on free103point9
Accelera Deck's Sunstrings EP opens like a late-night panic attack, like a power-plant explosion in the middle of nowhere, like all of the world's computers shorting out at once. A fuzzed-out soundwave gets clearer and louder, then gives way to a mad mess of fighting lightning bolts - jittery and harsh yet entrancing enough to stop you in your tracks. Think of the peaceful horror of that scene in the film The Ice Storm, where the electrical wire comes loose and winds its way through the air - take that feeling, shred it up, and amplify it by a million. Then you'll be getting close to the horrific sort of beauty generated by Sunstrings's 17-minute, hardcore first track (hardcore even as the noise attack sometimes gives way to silence, and to more intermittent but still sharp buzzing sounds, and to an assortment of other noises nearly impossible to describe). Keep your ears open; this is not a one-note EP. The second half leans away from the same sort of chaos, towards more of an overwhelming but steady cloud of brilliant noise. The Sunstrings EP is an extremely exciting voyage, a wild trip off to some other, other planet, far away from most people's existence. Enjoy it, sink into it, let your mind try to figure it out. But don't even start thinking about the fact that so many of these sounds were generated from a guitar, or your head will explode.
This May 2004 release follows the ‘Ipsissima Vox?
LP and seeks a welcome unrest in a wash of guitar
feedback sonorities that oscillate, warp & disquise
notes, form clusters, spiral in maladroit loops and
finally yield to overwhelming feedback. Four tracks
here, alternately dense/sparse, including contained
chaos ( # 1), screened filtration creating an abyss of
micro-tonalities aside aggressive drone ( # 2), brief
reverberations ( # 3) and bleeding & blended beats
mondo laborious ( # 4). From gradual/infinitesimal
to sudden/enormous, these Chris Jeely- scapes are
difficult listening & perplexing in concept - yet giant
steps toward noise artistry.
Clusters of crispy
crackling crunchy sounds, sometimes sounding like vinyl surface noise,
other times sampled sounds processed beyond recognition. Skittering
radio fuzz and flutter, scraping tinkling and needle sharp microscopic
nerve ending patterns. Unreeling waves slide around the stereo field
like nearly amorphous shapes sliding though your headphones. Elsewhere
he employs a broader stroke, with sustained droning tones that
gradually shift. The final track is mostly silence with tiny
insect-like sounds that flutter like gnats. The solo project of Chris
Jeely of Birmingham, Alabama; these soundscapes feel like an
exploration of the surface of a series of strange haunted electronic
planets.
As far as electronic re-workings of sounds done by electric guitar go, this is as completely the opposite of Fennesz as I have heard. And then again also not. Is that a little contradictive? Well, better get used to it. It is not the only hazard to your as of yet still innocent mind. This EP is part nerve-wrecking, part soothing and then part nerve-wrecking again, but it might help to induce some currents into your feeble thoughts so as to make you a better person. Or something. I have a hard time remembering things because of all the little blue pills and the endless sundowns and everybody calling me “Neo”. Better get used to it.
With three pieces totaling thirty-three minutes plus a fifteen-minute hidden track, Chris Jeely’s 2004 Sunstrings ‘EP’ seems an oddity even before a note sounds. Using guitar, oscillator, and computer, Jeely generates a corrosive roar in the seventeen-minute opener “Dross,” yet its crushing arsenal of noise is amazing if not necessarily pleasant. This writhing excursion fractures into prickly caterwauls of abrasive splatter, grinding glissandi, and thorny swarms—the sonic portrait of a machine writhing in pain as it’s torn to pieces. Coming after “Dross,” the cresting waves and ringing overtones of the fifteen-minute drone “Sunstrings” sound downright musical. At less than a minute, “777” is little more than a few scattered bleeps, while a hidden track presents scattered flickers of rustles and scrapes that gradually coalesce into overlapping babble.
To call this an EP is a bit of a misrepresentation. While it is only four songs (really, only 3 because one is less than a minute long), it still clocks in at nearly 50 minutes. Which is longer than many full lengths.
From blistering electronic circuits melting to calmer experimental tweaks. Accelera Deck tortures their instruments and turn out static-y sounds with the original sound still there, but heavily manipulated. Some tracks are full and dense, a near white wall of Japanese style noise, while other tracks are super minimal and have occasional bursts. Not techno, not electronica, although made with electronics, this is experimental-type stuff.
The “Sunstrings” CD EP clocks in about 50 minutes - more CDEPs like this, please! This time Chris Jeely only employs the guitar, oscillator, and computer. The music was recorded in late 2003, however, the three tracks (plus one hidden) differ much from each other! The over 17 minute long opener, “Dross” is quite a big, and bitter, pill to swallow – it feels like riding over pathless tracts; we clash against lots of stones, patches of grass, and fall into some holes. Thus the track leads us through brushes of guitar feedback, distortion, tweaking, bleeps, noise blasts, abrasive sounds, snippets & junk, white noises. A wide range of Chris' capabilities in generating noise. Oh damn! The second track comes in! Believe me, it's worth digging through the quarter of the hour for your ears to experience catharsis in another long-run opus “Sunstrings”! Beautiful noise that falls down on you like rain - one, massive and sustained torrent of sound! Excellent! Alas, after the first five minutes, the pace slows down and the torrent turns into a stream of modulated sound with tweaked tunes and a little distortion. I hardly noticed the third track in the very first listening sessions - a few seconds of climbing up, and falling down a single sound. To pronounce its title “777” takes not much less time than the track itself lasts! And the final, “hidden” track is a sort of lowercase music, or glitch music in that very obvious way - single bleeps, scratches, whistlings, snippets... With “Sunstrings” Chris Jeely proves his flexible approach to his interests in making music. Continued research brings him more acclaims than bad marks from the reviewers! He is keeping up the good level.
Two more recent releases on Chris Jeely's (Accelera Deck's) Scarcelight
Recordings. One of them is his own called 'Sunstrings' EP, but it's almost 50 minutes. It says on the cover that Chris uses guitar, oscillator and computer. The guitar sound can be heard in the second most noisy track, but it's hardly recognizable (or not at all) in the others. The first and the last track (there are 3 titles on the cover and 4 tracks on the cd) are along the lines of the cut-up glitchy/noisy sound, like Pita or like Evol's release on Scarcelight, but with different dynamics and means. Accelera Deck is more comfortable on the impressionistic side of noise here, or in a more musical term that would be a special kind of shoegaze noise, with much more lap-top, cut-up and more thrown around than the regular, of course. The third track is very short, only few seconds, so maybe that doesn't count as a track? I don't know, but I like it as the others. My Bloody Valentine should like this too (and Sonic Youth could learn few nice noisy tricks).
Guitar experimental ambient and noise with a nod to laptop noise/click and cut artists, Accelera Deck uses the first of four tracks with
guitar to create an alternately dense and sparse field of sudden sounds and patterns. This effort is revisted throughout the record,
albeit only in a minor way for the beautifully spacious fifteen minute total ambient piece that makes the second track. This one gets
lifted up into grandiose and heroic guitar melodies, exquisite ambient. The last piece is a total mystery, with long spaces of complete
silence, then gradual tiny tones, then violent clutters of noise, then squeaking nothings resounding. It says EP, but it's actually
fifty minutes of material. It's hard to say that Accelera Deck were trying to "get anywhere" with this record, but it does seem to
explore a certain unnameable sort of style and attitude.
I find it totally bewildering and unguessable, and that's a good thing
After 2003's Ipsissima Vox (Scarcelight Recordings) Accelera Deck (Chris Jeely) once again takes to his most unconventional guitar
work to crash land his new Sunstrings EP. Opening with the contained chaos of a scribbly seventeen-minute "Dross," Jeely's goal is
to fully emasculate the untamed inherent power of his instrument by oscillating it into submission. This effect has developed
harmonious possibilities, probably some quite haphazard. The end result is a fully elongated sense of dancing lines and dots that
pixelate and draw in finite synchronicities. At almost 50 minutes this is lengthy for any ordinary EP, but no complaints here - only
an urgency for more of the same please. The title track takes what one could imagine to be a Spiritualized jam, process it finely in
La Machine and cross breed it with a level of screened filtration techniques that leave only an abyss of random micro-tonalities amid
the in your face drone. "777" is less than a minute of nothing but a few single reverberations, a sound out and a big open space as a
prelude to the final untitled track which takes paced cricket-like spikes and brings them closer together as the fifteen and a half
minutes bleed, blend and ultimately become structured, lined-up beats to be reckoned with. It's click, click, blip, shree, click,
crunch, pah start off quite easy to watch as the sounds, like popcorn jut into the empty void, but if you are wearing headphones be
forewarned that this eventually becomes quite ear-popping about half way through - it's a welcome unrest.
This May 2004 release follows the “Ipsissima Vox”
LP and seeks a welcome unrest in a wash of guitar
feedback sonorities that oscillate, warp & disquise
notes, form clusters, spiral in maladroit loops and
finally yield to overwhelming feedback. Four tracks
here, alternately dense/sparse, including contained
chaos ( # 1), screened filtration creating an abyss of
micro-tonalities aside aggressive drone ( # 2), brief
reverberations ( # 3) and bleeding & blended beats
mondo laborious ( # 4). From gradual/infinitesimal
to sudden/enormous, these Chris Jeely- scapes are
difficult listening & perplexing in concept – yet giant
steps toward noise artistry.
Chris Jeely's Accelera Deck project has seen a lot of changes. His early incarnation as an obvious Autechre re-tread gave way to a more
interesting and more unique version that worked cut up beats and layers of guitar together in ways we might have always hoped Kevin Shields
would get around to trying. Having seen Accelera Deck live a few months back, I knew that a new release was likely to be a lot of
processed live instrument sound with little structure or apparent motivation, but even that foreknowledge couldn't have prepared me
for the wankfest that opens up his newest disc, Sunstrings. In fact, the track "Dross" nearly perfectly sums up for me all of the
things that are putrid and reprehensible about the intersection of technology and music in the hands of people who assume we should
give a damn. Whether the source of "Dross" is Jeely's guitar or his hard drive, or some contact mics on African Killer Bees having
their wings torn off or the subsonic rubmlings of seismic events around the equator, no amount of explanation or theoretical discourse
can save it from being 15 of the worst minutes of recorded music I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It's not that Jeely
doesn't come up with some cool twerps and buzzes and noises; he mangaes to create a whole catalog of them in the service of "Dross."
There's sample fodder to spare here for kids wanting that glitch-core sound but who aren't equipped to arrive at it the old fashioned
way. The problem is, there is a complete lack of any purpose, feeling, direction, or consequence to the track that meanders along with
the mouse and keystrokes that are obviously creating it. Hell, if this was being composed by a robot Jeely built in his Alabama flat
making music based on an algorhithm that decrypts Fantastic Four comic books and turns the plotlines into audio... I DON'T CARE because
at the end of it, it still sounds like a total waste of time! "Dross" must be Jeely's middle finger aimed at his listeners, because when
he actually tries to make a good piece of music as he does with "Sunstrings," he is more than capable. The beautifully rich tones and
distorted crackle of processed guitar in "Sunstrings" make "Dross" seem that much more abhorent. Get to the point man! There's some
subtle, wonderful work in the second track of this curious EP, but it's unfortunately sandwiched between digital masturbation that has
no business being recorded or released by anyone. The third track is but a click and whimper, then its on to the fourth track, but
since only three titles are listed, I can only assume this is a mastering mistake. And who could blame the guy for wondering where
the music starts or stops with the laborious "777." It's nothing short of a glitch collection all trotted out with huge gaps that
make it seem like a mistake. If this were a playful game of musical connect the dots, I'd understand, but it sounds more like
someone fucking off in Audiomulch and again, no theory (though thankfully, none is presented) could render this enjoyable or
enlightening in the least. This should have been a one-track "Sunstrings" single; hopefully there's more like that available
in the future. |