Carpark
Far more
glitchy and filled with non-linear messes of static and random noise,
the majority of Yearlong
has a less polished and more improvised structure than what I am
accustomed to from either composer and so, upon first listen, I was a
bit shocked by what I was hearing. The first Knitting Factory track is
basically a series of highly edited pulses forced into envelopes of
echo, reverb, sudden decompression, and 90 degree turns. There's very
little room for continuity. Similarly, the recording from the Bottom of
the Hill in San Francisco comes off as a noise performance edited and
disjointed on the spot; gone are the smooth curves that populated both
Davis' and Whitman's releases from last year. On the other hand, the
two WFMU Radio pieces and the Kontor Gallery recording in Köln, Germany
fit together quite well: the bells, whistles, reversed signal hums and
guitar samples all flow in and out seamlessly, as though they were
meant to sit side by side on a disc. The La Casa performance in
Washington is a beautiful mix of kitchen sink percussion and simple,
spacious piano bits and the massive WNYU-FM track from New York
(recorded on the same day as the Washington performance) is a blissful
mix of contemplative bells and shuffling utensils. These two tracks, in
particular, are amazing because of how different they are. Recorded on
the same day, they're indicative of how diverse both composers are and
just how willing they are to try new ideas. The Impakt Festival
recording, the last track on the disc, is particularly fun, too, and
seals my feelings on this album up. A combination of crackling hiss and
marching band samples, it lights up the end of an album that, at first,
can be a little daunting, but ends up being excellently diverse and
addictive in all its playfulness. - Lucas Schleicher
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