Boris D. Hegenbart - [smip]

Boris D. Hegenbart
[smip]
Quecksilber
3

Operating here under the nom de musique “2/TAU”, Boris Hegenbart serves up a collection of pieces based on field recordings of sorts, sometimes (always?) apparently involving devices and incitements of his own creation, all leavened and strained through baths of post-production. For instance, on the opening track, [snooze], one hears engine sounds, night crickets, ambient room hum and who-knows-what-else gathered together, tossed into a sonic grinder and admixed with tonal organ chords and irregular bell-like tones. It works rather well, evoking a sense, though disjointed, of place, a remembered one if not an actual one. “Disjointed”, however, becomes a key word as Hegenbart flits, dreamlike, from one room of sonic apparitions to another, frequently using grabbed snatches of conversation (English, Japanese, French, German, Chinese) that loom into earshot in nightmarish fashion only to immediately recede. At times (maybe, considering my lack of understanding of Japanese, Chinese and German, it’s a consistent feature), the voices appear to be reacting to an object, presumably one presented to them by Hegenbart. One supposes that they are manipulating the object and producing sounds which are later transmuted. ”[smip]”, for example, stands for “something moving inside plastic box” and, I’m guessing that the item in question, given the repeated instance of certain sounds, might be the primary source for much of what is heard here. Regardless of the instigatory mechanism, the proceedings tend to center themselves in a very similar space. A little of this goes a long way and each subsequent iteration of this idea adds little to the first, pleasurable impression, indeed only watering it down as the disc progresses. There’s also a certain hermeticism to all this, something that might attract some listeners as it puts off others as Hegenbart both indulges in his gentle provocations and documents the results in a fairly claustrophobic sound world. Not that this isn’t, in fact, what goes on in many a release of this sort, but there’s more than a whiff of someone creating these miniatures in a darkened basement, fashioning intricate constructions that, for all their complication, have little capacity for breathing. I can see some listeners enjoying [smip] quite a bit and there are certainly multiple points that are tasty for seconds or minutes at a time, but for my taste, the choices made too often sound routine and self-satisfied and I’m left feeling that on the whole there’s too much science experiment and too little, for lack of a better term, art.

~ Brian Olewnick