Aspects of Physics :: Systems of Social Recalibration Review
2002-07-01
Underground Studio
http://tjnorris.net/soundvision.htm
To call this record pure electronic music would be too simple. These guys take the full-on step of triggering their work with robotics, various filters/patches and throw in guitars for good measure. Having created The Experimental (web) Network, Aspects of Physics is a collective including Jason Forrest Soares, Thatcher Orbitashi, JFRE 'robot' Coad, Fredrick Mathias Lorenz and Michael Andrew Kaufmann. Currently touring alongside J. Lesser, this band has a sound that should prick up the ears of those atuned to the Chicago scene of Tortoise and Jim O Rourke. On the seventeen minute Level 4.2 we are entrenched in layered percussion, strings and quirky laptop play. Unlike other programming gurus trademarked by Apple this is a more straight ahead approach to funking up the jams ala The High Llamas and The Dylan Group with a hankering for visual foolery. s.id takes us out, far out on an electro-ride inverting anything you have heard on Warp by the third power. Soares uses C64 to effect on this two-minute miracle. Manipulated synths and hi-wave compusystems make this long-player a treat in its quirks. Everything Else We Must Pass Over In Silence is a raging anthem of Cageian distain in its righteous post drum and bass rigor. The tray card reads To the logical positivists, the only things worth talking about are our direct sensory experiences, and the logical inferences that we can make therefrom . Certainly said from a free jazz players perspective, but in its use of its tools AoP may be biting off the hand that feed(back)s with such coy delusions. OK, they are reconstructionists, but the sound, albeit cryptically aligned to the later night college radio set, does have a flavor yet tatse-tested. It is outside of its initial construct. Entrainment finds Lorenz sampling robotics and stimulating the underbelly of this Vangelis meets Merzbow class of AM/FM sensibility. Closing its doors with Contact, this disc proves that there will be a sequel. Playful melody provided by Orbitashi (if that s his real name, awesome) with Soares complementary guitar drone stimulating all sides of this circular object. This is the type of recording deserving of its DDD rating.
--TJ Norris
