Seht & Stelzer - Exactly What You Lost

Intransitive
028

This well-constructed, finely paced set built by Seht (New Zealander Stephen Clover) and Howard Stelzer via postally exchanged creations launches into existence the way one might have expected: a brutal storm of tortured tape. But once the door’s been kicked in, the disc takes a surprising turn toward more ethereal realms, initially a vibrating, wind tunnel-like effect shortly supplanted with a harsher, grinding tone beneath, the volume and level of detail in each increasing as the track progresses until it all comes tumbling down. The third of the five untitled cuts comes at the drone from a slightly more traditional approach, one of the prominent elements sounding almost like a cloudily recorded, low electric guitar strum, adjacent ones inferring recordings from the field. Ingredients slowly accrete, the piece expands then subsides; succinct and effective.

A brief but enticing track that mixes short, radio-like bursts of noise with at least two other, more watery sounds leads to the final and most satisfying work, a 26 minute excursion into an absolutely absorbing world. As a marginal comparison, there’s something akin to the sort of hyper-dense work of Jason Lescalleet at play here, though Seht and Stelzer remain unique. Rough, multiple layers of drone, a string sample that I know I’ve heard but can’t place (a John Wall expropriation?), birds and more billow to the surface and sink beneath it, the whole mass steadily flowing past like some slow moving river. The piece has the sense to stay in one large area allowing the listener to bathe in its wealth of detail and their relationships. This is my first exposure to Seht but it’s also the finest work I’ve heard to date from Stelzer—a really strong creation. The footstep-like clops that draw the piece toward its conclusion at first seem a world away from the tape assault heard in the first track but the intrusion of raucous noise blasts in the final couple of minutes reminds the listener from whence this all has sprung.

Good stuff, check it out.

Intransitive