Esther Venrooy - Shift Coordinate Points/The Spiral Staircase

Shift Coordinate Points
entr’acte
30

Esther Venrooy is a Dutch-born composer working out of Belgium who, at least judging by these two releases, tends to operate in an area midway between electronic drones with minimalist overtones and found sounds, and in doing so produces some of the most striking music I’ve heard in recent months. “Shift Coordinate Points”, recorded in 2005, uses as its starting point material documented on the fabled Conet Project (to which Venrooy contributed). As you may recall (I’ve never managed to snag a copy of this difficult to come by item) that venture involved the capture of coded shortwave transmissions of the type immortalized in AMM’s extraordinary concert in London in 1982, when Rowe’s radio picked up the sultry East German voice steadily articulating five-digit numeric sequences, over and over in a mesmeric pattern. Here, the first of two pieces, “Brussel”, begins with a repeated melody, quite a fetching one, played in organ-like tones, under which appears a threatening, low drone as though some exterior force is seeping through the walls. After several minutes, this unsettling atmosphere abruptly halts and the listener is plunged into the world of coded transmissions, staticky swatches of “eines”, “fünfs”, “siebens”, etc. swirled into a froth of electronica. The section that ends the piece comes close to capturing the eerie, otherworldly aspect heard in the AMM performance, a dire throb underlying a distorted female voice reciting numbers, in English, in sets of four. “Arthur”, on the flip side (both this and the following release are issued on vinyl LP only), is a more relaxed collage, the overlaid voices melding with electronics in a rather stately dance, almost as adjacent lines in a fugue, a peaceful resolution. The choice Venrooy makes in weighting the various elements seem quite carefully considered and the resulting balance lifts the music above tangentially similar work as found, say, in early Scanner. This music has heft.

The Spiral Staircase
entr’acte
50

“The Spiral Staircase” is quite different, comprised largely of modulated drones amidst other electronic detritus but no disembodied voices. As with the melodic segment that began “Brussel”, the impression is less one of detecting something “new”—indeed, many of the sounds have a familiar aspect—but more with the grace and thoughtfulness with which the sounds are aligned and juxtaposed. The ringing throb that begins side one here, waxing every four or five seconds, is, in a sense, a recognizable enough element but Venrooy manages to invest it with something, some combination of frequencies, that endows it with a unique and weighty presence that focuses one’s attention sharply and immediately. Various other sounds are gradually layered in, “above” and “below” the initial pulse, generally possessing a harsher, more granular character, each enhancing the disquiet. It wells to a climax then subsides into a growling, steadier drone which, in turn, is encased in a multitude of others, fashioning a complex matrix wherein the listener can discern at his or her will a vast number of patterns, reflections and relationships. Gears are shifted several times throughout the piece, though it remains drone-centered for the duration and the changes straddle that giddy territory between initial awkwardness and retrospective naturalness.

Side Two (it seems to be an entirely different piece, though no titles are supplied) remains in the general area of dronage but over in the part of the yard with all the crackling and static. Again, Venrooy weaves together countless strands, each clear enough to focus on individually if one desires but better to hear in a relational manner, something that will doubtless vary upon each listen. I was often reminded of the “standard” result of Cageian listening in a given environment: at first you might think there’s only two or three sound sources in play; listening more attentively inevitably serves to uncover many more. This construction includes a mélange of massively deep tolling with wonderfully quirky, almost cuckoo-y chittering and blooping atop, sending the piece momentarily reeling off into the middle distance. The disc fades out in a series of ringing tones not too far from those that opened it, a bit icier but less foreboding.

Both albums are fine recordings from a composer previously unfamiliar to me but one from whom I anticipate hearing a great deal more. They’re available in limited editions of 300 from entr’acte, so if you have a working turntable, I strongly advise checking ‘em out. Very good work.