Connect_icut - Crows and Kittiwakes Wheel and Come Again

by Maarten Schiethart

published: 29 / 1 / 2014

Connect_icut - Crows and Kittiwakes Wheel and Come Again

Label: Aagoo Records
Format: CD

Abstract but compelling fourth album from Vancouver-based electronic composer, Connect_icut

Review

'Crows and Kittiwakes Wheel and Come Again' album is the second in the Rev Laboratories series which is curated by Bas Mantel from Alkmaar in the Netherlands. Coming in a distinct design, the series focuses on abstract glitch and electronica music - Music that could be made from converting a text or graphic computer file into sounds. Not as digital music sheets, but as image pixels turned into sound bites, and then rearranged as compositions by human efforts. A modern equivalent of the pianola, operating as a device designed to read a painting or a photo. Connect_icut's fourth album, and the first one I heard from this Vancouver glitch composer, features many variations on vapourish sounds and faraway sirens, but this, however does not lead to a conflict of sounds. Calm, almost serene it only now and then sounds like a concoction, and when it does it sooner trills than annoys. Those moments of screeching electronica sound rather like sonic rock music. The closing track 'Again Now' could even appeal to admirers of Laurie Anderson’s 'O, Superman'. The humming on 'Again Now' pushes the building of tension over a matter of five minutes, as it washes out the glitches, very much like the enhanced scan of an old picture postcard.