Previously a digital-only release as part of Francisco López's Two-Headed Snake series of collaborations, this split release between him and equally legendary composer Éric La Casa features the two working independently, but from shared source material. What exactly that source material is never becomes entirely clear, but it gives a consistency between two very different, amazing works.
The source material specified is just 11 years of "objects and spaces," so any clear identification beyond what occasionally sounds like field recordings is pretty much impossible. Certain characteristics of sound appear clearly throughout both artists' compositions but utilized in noticeably different ways.
La Casa contributes two pieces of around 18 minutes each on the first disc. "Everyday Unknown 6" opens with a low frequency clicking that is blended with fragments of digital glitches. He quickly changes structures and elements, resulting in an extremely dynamic and evolving piece that never seems disorganized or chaotic. Mixing strange textures, clicks, and vibrations with what sounds like birds, wind, and fragments of conversation, he combines the identifiable with the abstract. By the end, he has paired rising waves of noise and a metallic, factory-like clattering.
"Everyday Unknown 7" first has La Casa utilizing open space more, until implementing sweeping electronic passages and a mix of digital/interference like noises. Through dramatic transitions he builds dense clusters of sound and allows them to disintegrate. He creates a fully enveloping quality to the piece, mixing panning roars of sound and deep, creaking noises. The environments change and the shifts are occasionally disorienting, but he balances that movement with an excellent implementation of silence and subtlety.
López's contribution is a single 49-minute piece, "Untitled #446." Right from the onset his material is substantially different from La Casa’s two. López joins a wet, bubbling bath with deep, electronic pulsations, conjuring a sense of aquatic depth. At first there is a lesser sense of open spaces and more sustained passages of sound. Crackles and digital type outbursts draw clear connections to La Casa's half of the release, but López's assembly is significantly different.
Abrupt drops to silence occur, signaling transitions within the composition. After the first, he returns with a suite of pops and crackles with that resemble buzzing insects. Far-off rumbles and distant crashes appear before he allows the sound to drift into essentially silence. He re-establishes the piece with muffled textures and digital fragments, eventually coalescing into sputtering series of noises. Shifting to a simmering layer of audio, López layers these passages upon one another, eventually interlocking into a complex loop before he slowly pulls things apart, leading to a slow drift back into silence.
The consistent textures of Induction/Mutation between both La Casa's and López's compositions that are most apparent are indistinct clicks, pops, and glitches that grab me in an ASMR sort of way that is difficult to describe, but massively captivating. Beyond something that subjective, the two create such different pieces from the same core materials that in any context would be impressive and captivating. Even though they go in different directions with the material, that common foundation creates a sense of cohesion that works extremely well, making for another exceptional release in both of their lengthy discographies.
