Friday, February 08, 2008
Reviewed by Massimo Ricci in Touching Extremes
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/extremes/touchinghome.htm
MIKRONESIA - Iris or comfortable too (Gears Of Sand)
Mikronesia is the nom d'art of Michael McDermott. Piano has been his favourite instrument since, as a small child, he was sitting on his grandmother's lap while she introduced him to the infinite world of the 88 keys. Yet, as life brought in its influence under the form of other involvements (namely playing with various bands and solo electronic music), the artist left the original object of interest alone for a long time. In 2007, though, McDermott decided to go back to the big box, exploiting its timbral properties to conceive a brand new composition mixing the best of two worlds (with a Harold Budd/Brian Eno inspiration, just for starters). Modifying the results with a laptop and an assortment of pedals, Mikronesia serves now an album that surely doesn't sound neither "Eno" nor "Budd" and is indeed quite personal, this being the feature that made me focus on it a little bit longer than my usual average in these genres. Many of the sounds heard are kind of suffocated - like perceived with a pillow on our head as we desperately try to sleep, the neighbour's daughter practicing her solfeggio exercises in the contiguous room - and, when in headphones, sometimes a distinct distortion creeps in. Not sure if it was meant to be there - we're not talking Vangelis-like engineering here. But all those strange electro-deformations - reverse reverbs, glitches, broken waves and interrupted drones - amidst this general atmosphere of "ugly beauty" somehow work well, and in the right conditions and circumstances this is a CD that could introduce several nice revelatory moments. Give it a good test. "Amorphous ambient for discriminating minds", anyone?