Hands To - Artiment

Musique concrete in the context of music is like a cozy and warm place at home. You wouldn't want to stay there for too long, but after being away and returning, you are always going there to rest. It's similar for me with musique concrete - I couldn't listen to it all the time, but these moments when I get a chance to - they are really nice. Of course maybe I'm so lucky to get only well done releases, who knows. As you might have understood from this introduction, Artiment is one of those pleasant and nice albums. Hands To is Jeph Jerman. I reviewed his releases several times already. It's a person who lives in a world full of music and from time to time he presents his worldview (or worldsound) in concentrated dose for those who are not able to analyze their surroundings that well. Artiment was a double tape, released in 1989 in Jeph's own label Big Body Parts. 20 years later Impulsy Stetoskopu rereleased remastered version in 2 CDrs that I'm listening to right now. There are couple of hours of soft field recordings and pirated radio transmissions recorded in HCA (whatever that could be) in these discs. The first disc consists of filthy, formless and barely tangible though very pleasant recordings. It's a feeling of wide space, distant humming of city and wind and insignificant presence of a man, piercing the cloud of sound from time to time. Soothing freshness. The last track is slightly different - more intense lo-fi noise, constructed from field recordings. Though the track is noisier, but it fits the whole picture very well. It seems that more concrete recordings were collected in the second disc. There is not so much of formless calmness and more details, sudden sound deviations, human voices and other brighter environmental elements in it. The same wide space, but if you could imagine a soothing dessert while listening to the first disc, the second sounds like pressing underwater depth. Once again my attention is drawn by the last track, which lasts for more than 20 minutes and develops in several stages, diverging towards more concrete sounds, but involuntarily returning to abstraction. The remark on the cover says that these discs might be combined and played together. This opens possibilities to experiment for yourself and create your own music. Sometimes it can bring you to beautiful results. Without experimenting too much I simply played both discs from the beginning and these barely unnoticeable differences between discs that I've mentioned before, disappear and well balanced, interesting surrealistic painting with trains, human voices, wind and nature sounds from 1989 is formed. Having in mind that all this is complemented by mild drone of the city that lives in the year 2013, I start to feel like travelling spaces and time. It's a record that is interesting and stimulating fantasy, where the joy of discovery travels hand in hand with sound world of Jeph Jerman.

Format: 2xCDr
Released: 2009
Label: Impulsy Stetoskopu
Edition: 120

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