shift coordinate points 12"
[2006, entr'acte]

when it comes to experimental musicians i must confess that i am biased in favor of women. that's not to say that i favor them more, but rather that i'm more prone to randomly download buy something i know is experimental from a woman. it's less about it viewing them as some sort of curious novelty and more about it just being novel, in general. this is a field that's not only dominated by white males (and asians), but also mostly listened to by them, so i'm more likely to be interested in what non-whites and non-males are doing in it. makes sense to me. really, though, i just love women. one of the great things about experimental / electro-acoustic improvisation / avant-garde music is that they're all musical fields where sex is rendered impotent. it's all about sound. getting back to my original point, venrooy was an artist i knew nothing about other than her name. i decided to check out her work and, as usual, my reverse-sexism paid off splendidly in the result of this outstanding lp.

with shift coordinate points, the rosmalen, netherlands-based sound artist (esther also does a good deal of work with audiovisual art and installations) tows a terrific line between sparse experimentation and accessible electronic composition. put more plainly, it's not totally void of melodic elements, though they're not the record's focus; that would actually be using shortwave radio samples integrated from the conet project's (aka akin o. fernandez) compiling of them on his 1997 release recordings of shortwave numbers stations, and crafting a remarkable soundscape for them. interested parties can freely (and guilt-free, if that's your thing) download that album here.

appropriately enough for a record whose sleeve merely says bleeeeeep, those are what we get at the onset of side a's lone track arthur. it quickly settles down though, favoring just a solitary beep every five seconds and only the faintest of background accompaniment. shortly after introducing tiers of sustained tones into the mix the aforementioned shortwave samples come into focus. in this instance they're short segments of a calm, soothing voiced british woman, alternating between reading off a series of numbers and saying "station eighteen please advance forth". her singling out that particular line is especially brilliant because when i hear it, i can already detect a slight rhythmic elegance to its mere enunciation. through her use of repetition and digital manipulation it gets even better. as they play out they'll slowly weave back and forth between clarity and a muddied sound that's akin to what cyborg ash sounded like just before he died in alien. by skewing with the modulation of the vocals, the words will start to blend together creating these somewhat bassy waves which accentuate the rhythm of their original cadence. supporting that are wonderfully airy drones and spacey ambiance which tie the passage together with their own unique brand of melody. around the five and a half-minute mark arthur takes a turn towards the sparse with a pair of raindrop-like sounds proving a slow, stretched-out rhythm, with not much else, save for another pair of electronic tones. once those drop out after a minute and a half... not a whole lot happening for a little while, until esther brings back those tones and expands on them a bit. it's incredibly simple with the tone merely being repeated in pairs, spread out a little bit, then reused in a different pitch, but it works well. added to that will soon be more shortwave number samples. those provide a nice addition, fleshing out the sound, but the tonal play is the biggest draw. the final few minutes center around the sustained droning of high-pitched frequencies. they're held relatively at bay, rolling in gentle waves and not loud enough to give you tinnitus.

it strikes me as a little surprising that this was released on vinyl because you'd really the lose the effect of the transition from arthur into brussel. the idea of losing the seamless way that it moves from shriller sounds into a gorgeous tonal melody, which opens up the second side, would be the only time i would validly endorse a cd. the chimey sound of it is like a music-box and just seems like it could go on endlessly, and i don't think i'd mind at all if that were the case. she'll let it carry on for three and a half minutes before reincorporating the conet project's transmissions. venrooy goes back to manipulating the samples, but here i find that it lacks the subtlety that worked so remarkably well earlier. the samples are heavily processed and the robotic staccato of them are turned into beats, pretty much. that doesn't last for too long and from there brussel briefly heads into a noisier direction with fax machine static, clipped vocals and tones, before coming out of that with heavy ambient droning. the slight shifting of the drone is a nice touch, but that won't even stick around for very long either. after giving us a little bit of everything, the bottom drops out and we're left with nothing. even when new samples are introduced, by this point, all the record has become is the slightly distorted issuing of numbers for the remaining minutes; both anti-climactic and rather dramatic. it's an interesting note to end on.

shift coordinate points would be a hard record to recommend for casual listeners because, for the most part, it isn't filled with sounds that are going to be constantly engaging. when you compound that with the record's oft occurring nothingness, i could see it being alienating. however, if you're in to actually absorbing music of this nature, it has a ton to offer. it's equally as gorgeous as it is haunting.

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esther venrooy and heleen van haegenborgh @ cafe wilhelmina, eindhoven, netherlands 12/1/08