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Jeph Jerman – Arcane Facture
Big buncha bink bonk, clink clonk. Metals on metals. Stones. Glass. Scraping across rough granite surfaces. Dragged through gnarled wooded patches. Metals, not so much in their whanging, more the delicate affair. Metals delicately interacting with a range of acoustic hosts, dinging them, pinging them, clanging them, banging them. But, like, delicate. Clanging and banging without the decay. Sharp. Percussive. So both delicate and, um, less-than-delicate. Semi-delicate. Let's say, big buncha bink bonk, clink clank. Clank fairly edging out the clonk. Mmm, yes, definitely more clank. (sigh) Let me start again.
With The Bray Harp, Mr Jerman's previous outing on White Centipede, the 'holes were treated to a veritable smorgasbord of acoustic clinking, clanking, clonking and clunking. Call it deep, slow-mo, plummet through continuously buckling scaffold of wood, metal, rust. Brute-ist, physical. There were a few more chefs involved in the sound production- luminaries like Eric La Casa, Ben Brucato, and some guy named Oskar Brummel. And a clear sense of, well I wouldn't call it narrative progression, but a clear and quite classical structural exposition, complete with measured ramping and de-ramping of tensions, culminating on one side with a fairly rough-edged piece of brute scrape-texture.
With Arcane Facture, there is a sense of progression, or at least a sense of period and structure, but I wouldn't call it clear. This is more free form, more bare to the elements, erosion, entropy. More plainly within the province of the principle mover, to whom all sound production duties are solely tasked. Delicate, or semi-delicate, and quite beautiful really, a rural gamelan of percussive clamor, setting to task a motley assortment of rough n tumble objects found readily on hand. Hands, too, are a big part of this, particularly in the breakdowns inside the clamor, affording exploded views of very physical rubbing, scrubbing, and scraping. Zoom out for breathtaking panorama, densely forested thickets of acoustic clatter, hailstorms or insect swarms of glass and metal, sticks and stones sucked up in the cacophonous swirling spirals. DENSE layers involved, their careful pilings and unpeelings subtle enough to suggest a practiced set of hands to the task. If this is entropy (in motion) it is in the studied simulation of form free of design. Quite deliberate and determined design so artfully suggestive of anything but.
Okay then. A wee peep at the sneakily sexed up architecture.
Track 1 pitches head-first into a heaving steel vat, possibly a large trash compactor, filled with nuts, bolts and other acoustic metal scraps. Steady, unhurried, semi-delicate. The machine jams, attention zeroes in on uncooperative grinding motor- then sudden explosive burst into gear, sharp metal bolts hurtling all over the place. At this point we can actually hear the engine grumbling away in the background, though the star players are the massed cantankerous junk-piles of binkety-bonked clinkety-clank. The machine fades away, taking with it much of the massed clatter. By the fourth minute we're focused in on a single plank of rumpled wood, practiced hand wearing methodically at the abraded surface. Then, the shattering glass launch of brief and busy affair with chain-linked lengths of corrugated tubing before a slip and plunge into heavier liquid resonances, brief flits of rusted squeal sexing up wrinkled crink and crank. Fourteen minutes and a conveyor belt transports the crinkling assemblage through meaty musts of boiler room thunder. Finally the decisive and unceremonious plonk back into the trash compactor, chattering clattering clutter of bonked-up binkily clink clank.
Track 2 spends its first fifteen minutes sunk deep in chattering clatterland. Bink bonk clink clank uber alles. Scrap-metal symphonies of physical scrubbing scraping and scratching, plus some fairly determined digging in the dirt. Unlike Track 1 there are no deviations of form, free invitation to lose oneself in the dense junk textures. Delicate, or semi-delicate, but, with sufficient application of the volume knob, HARSH. No deep dives, machine murmur or liquid resonance, this is all in the mid-to-upper end of spiky earhole abrasion. At fifteen minutes a distant disembodied voice announces decision to shut things down. Then the much reduced sounds of slow, methodical clean up. By degrees, the remnants of clutter are taken over by tape hiss, muffled snuffle-textures snuffing themselves out in increments until the tape-head itself is simply too worn down to go on.
Digest spew:
If you like the sounds of metal whanging on metal, you may want to look elsewhere. Jerman's got the metals, lots of em, but is here more concerned with their subtler acoustic dimensions. The binks, the bonks, the clinks, the clanks. But, like, shitloads of em. Wide-panned nail-storms of clinkily-clank slicing into, and often through, calm cratered surfaces. It ain't just the metals, but an almighty host of raw material. Glass, stones, wood, dirt. Pretty much whatever's at hand to the task at hand. Hands, too, are undeniably key to the very physical rendering, very rough materials scraping scouring scrubbing and scratching at the abraded edges. Get yer fricken elbow in there laddie! Bink bonk clink clank uber bonking alles.
