Review of The Four Hundred Boys from Erasing Clouds: http://www.erasingclouds.com/25octrev.html
Silence, static, grumblings, buzzings, whirring, people speaking...these
are some of the myriad sounds that make up The Four Hundred Boys, a
collection of seven pieces, recorded between 1995 and 2000, by
Seattle-based sound artist Alex Keller. Manipulating sounds in all sorts of
ways which will not be easily understood by listeners (but are detailed in
the linter notes for those with a need to comprehend what's going on
technically), Keller creates sonic art which is complicated in the best
way--meaning it is difficult in the way that gets your brain moving in
various directions, not in the way that means what's going on is too
abstract to enjoy. While not filled with surface-level aesthetic pleasures
of the empty sort that people listen to top-40 radio for, these pieces are
layered with unique sounds and juxtapositions of sounds. The opening track,
"And the walls became the world all around," delivers an intermittent but
creeping wave of sound, at times metallic, at times electronic, at times
almost nonexistent but not. The second, "Decades II," uses something like a
chime or a gong in the background and a squirming buzz/siren in the front.
Both increase in loudness, unity and pitch until they collide like a train;
then the track cuts to ancient-sounding tones and eerie silence, feeling
like the spooky aftermath of something (with metallic ghosts lurking). From
there the track continues to build like a cloud in different ways, with
various sorts of clanging going on. All of these pieces can be appreciated
on numerous levels. "Decades II," for example, is awe-inspiring in one way
while listening the first time, and in a completely different way after
reading in the liner notes that it was an exploration of the sounds that
can come from an electric guitar. That multiplicity in listener reaction is
part of the appeal of these pieces; another is simply the mystery which
lies behind such a breadth of sound. From "Landscape: Still Life With Bug
Lamp," an ambient track with a consistent buzzing sound, to "Gun," a cut-up
story where someone is speaking but nothing makes any logical sense, Keller
relies on all sorts of techniques. Each technique, and each track, has a
different background and sounds different from the next, yet each has the
effect of getting listeners to try to figure it out on their own. Art which
will likely mean something different for each listener, The Four Hundred
Boys shines with a striking intricacy which should please listeners
looking for something to intrigue, mystify and challenge them.
David Heaton
Review of The Four Hundred Boys from Vital Weekly week 39 number 292
Alex Keller lives in Seattle, and releases his first solo CD. Besides
he is a member of Rebreather, an improvisational unit with
Christopher DeLaurenti. Not that I ever heard their music...
Improvisation is not something Alex is doing on his solo CD. Each
track is described on the sleeve in terms of intention and what he
has done to create it. One piece just uses guitar sounds, in order to
create a serieus piece of electronic music, another uses piano sounds
(the title piece, which unfortunally is not a great piece, as it's
dabbling too much in the academic world but with lesser power) or
field recordings. Keller's music work best if he works with stretched
out, drone like sounds, with small events happening under the
surface, such as in 'Landscape: Still Life With Bug' or 'Cosmetic'.
They too are the result of sturdy processing and examining the ideas
of the serious avant-garde, but at the same time result in a music
that will appeal to the underground. Overall a very fine CD.
Fraans DeWaard
Review of The Four Hundred Boys from IEM Webzine, http://svalemor.chat.ru/k_.htm#3
A new name for me in the experimental music, with debut album - an always
interesting and breathtaking experience. Alex Keller
is Seattle based composer who has a kind of academic music education and
worked with Christopher DeLaurenti. Intrinsically
atonal fragments like the back side of the artificial, technological music
around us, its contrast with the harmony between sound
and silence in the quiet parts, careful collection of dissonantly sound
events which are impossible to hear in half-ear (as much as
you can't escape the sense of reality of definite sounding objects when
feel its presence aurally) - to follow my description, you
should imagine works in musique concrete and other abstract styles of
composition. Seven pieces, mostly pretty long by
duration, partly hypnotize listener with the dreamlike evolving, and partly
disturb with their uncontrolled and constantly changing,
breaking basis. Every piece demonstrate the perfect skills in the field
recordings technique, computer software & processing,
electronic treatment of acoustic instruments like piano and guitar, rhythms
and even spoken word. I can't say that this album
leave some sort of radical impression - it's quite typical for experimental
music school, as much as appealing for the mass-culture
consumers. And that's also the main reason for which I can recommend it to
somebody who will be interested.
Dmitry Vasilyev
Review (in correspondence) of The Four Hundred Boys from Prisms, http://prismsonline.org/
It's a damned good album. You really have your own voice, and you also managed to crack through a particular bias of mine. Allow me to explain briefly. As far as electronic and collage-oriented works go I have a tendency to avoid ones that claim they will recreate the dynamics of narrative (as when you say, re: The Four Hundred Boys itself: "My intention... was to use layers of creative translation... to achieve some of the narrative richness and dischord that the text had"). It's not that this isn't a very laudable goal (I'm somewhat influenced by Susanne Langer, incidentally), and I *do* think such objects *can* be crafted, but many who try to do so, simply fail. Pieces which so aspire may turn out to be nice, and even generally worth listening to, but for all that they often don't quite achieve what we might call a truly narrative texture. Indeed I resisted listening to your album for a day or so, I think because I feared disappointment. But I shouldn't have worried, as you actually seem to be able to do what needs to be done. Interestingly enough, the piece in which your own voice seems least clear is in Cosmetic: I like that piece, but perhaps because it was composed as a soundtrack, there is some clash between your voice and Mr. Authement's. However, The Four Hundred Boys worked exceedingly well, both in living up to its stated goal as well as in instantiating (what seemed to me to be) your own voice as a composer, and since it too is inspired (effectively) by a scenario, my hypothesis may be in error; and at that point I draw a blank on further analytic insights for now.
Anyway, little of that really matters. It's a fine album, I hope it finds its audience upon release...
Iain Edgewater
Review of The Four Hundred Boys from Ampersand Etcetera, http://ampersandetc.virtualave.net/ampv2001_09.html
This is Keller's first album, combining pieces composed between 1995 and
2000. He was educated in music theory at Huston, and his theoretical
background is evident in the extensive liner notes and the methods and
objectives they outline. And I love liner notes: I think it is great
sometimes to get an angle on what the composer is intending - the Sound
Drifting set is great for that too. And it also helps to place Keller in an
electroacoustic part of my mind - it can be quite confusing if you put on
what you expect to be drifting ambient and out comes gestural precision.
On 'And the walls became the world around us' he uses a 'limited sound
palette' - a rising and falling tone, squarly buzzing noise, organ tones,
pops and crackles - and creates a subtle, quiet sound world that lives in
the silences between sounds and the solo and overlapped components. Quite
restrained compared to 'Decades II', an exploration of the guitar sound,
which shifts dramatically between noisy buzzing tones, gentle shimmers,
rhythmic choppy mechanical edgy parts and more as we swing between
recognisable guitar and more treated and bent versions.
The title work is a strange conceptual piece, written by taking a piano part
and playing it backwards, modulating it, rewriting and more: the reality is
a fascinating twisted tonality of odd notes in unexpected progressions,
electronic hummings and pulsing scrapes and scratches which is oddly
entrancing - and has some affinity with 'Decades II' in its tonality. A more
sensuous mood envelops 'Landscape: still life with bug lamp', which is
constructed from 12 layers, and for the listener is a shifting soundscape of
deep resonances, shimmering chimes and bells, much closer to ambience.
The long 'Cosmetic (soundtrack)' encapsulates and extends the album: it is a
sequence of short segments, all created on the computer, which span a
continent of moods: quite gentle tonal works; mechanical industrial rhythms
with descending notes; cut up and sequestered coices, probably from
television; edgy harsh buzzing and squals; and more. A searching demanding
piece which is quite intriguing. Which segues well into 'All of these
things' which is intriguing in different ways: created from field recordings
both natural and in an echoing bunker, together with read texts, Keller
processed them in a variety of ways - stretching, convolution and more - and
has created a soundscape which hovers at the edge of familiarity, sounds
which are almost comprehensible, shivering and swaying at the edge of our
auditory cortex. And the final disorientation - 'Gun' in which a text of a
dream is read, but the text was previously put through some cut-up
techniques, and again, reality seems just a confused thought process away:
almost understandable, a powerful conclusion.
My experience with musiqueconcrete/electroacoustic is not broad, so I can't
say how this album fits within the genre: but I can say that I find it
intriguing, entertaining and stimulating, in the same way the Empreintes
Digitales disks I looked at a few issues ago were. If you enjoy music
composed and constructed in this way, I think that this album would appeal.
Jeremy Keens
Review of The Four Hundred Boys from AmbiEntrance, http://www.spiderbytes.com/ambientrance/0701ov.htm
Alex Keller is serious about his sonic manipulations, presenting several pieces he's devised over the past few years. The disc opens on And the walls became the world all around; the title comes from a quote from "Where the Wild Things Are" and the bizarrely droning/sputtering sonic mutations are created/processed in MetaSynth. Based on ancient Mayan Popul Vuh, the fifteen-minute title track involves multi-reversed piano phrases (though you'd never know it) in its start and stop tonal blurts. Ringing tones swelter around Landscape: still life with bug lamp (3:46), a smeary layered blur dating back to 1995.
Spastically exploding with media-samples and static, Cosmetic (soundtrack) (19:54) changes gears several times... to big rippling soundwaves, then squealing streams of starkly wavering scree, then to murky beats, Space-Invader bleeps, thunderous assaults and more. Less-aggressive All of these things is often quietly percolating with unknown organic activities and muffled voices. The closing piece, Gun, features a fragmented spoken dream recollection. Though the intent of Keller's experimentations aren't always clear, the results are always unpredictable.
David J. Opdyke
Review of The Four Hundred Boys from Incursion.org, http://www.incursion.org/imr/archive/040.html
This CD brings together seven electroacoustic pieces created over the past six years by Alex Keller, a man whose fascination with the omnipresence of sound as artifice has led to his interest in sound design and difficult music. Each of these pieces tells a different story, and is constructed with different methods and sound material. Keller describes his intentions and methods for each piece in the liner notes, and this is where you get the sense that he is a real enthusiast for experimenting with sound. The first, "And the walls became the world all around", uses a limited number of sounds from a soft synth, later treated with effects and then assembled in ProTools. The second piece uses the sound of an electric guitar; the third, a piano. Others use field recordings, samplers, and soft synths, all put through the wheels of various effects and cut-up techniques. Some of these pieces are wonderful; they exhibit coherent and inspiring sound worlds filled with rich textures and captivating sounds. For example, the harmonic drones which coast through the short piece "Landscape: still life with bug lamp" occupy an impressive dynamic. Also, the field recordings and vocal manipulations in "All of these things" form one of the strongest pieces on the CD. Others might feel a little fragmented in places (parts of "Cosmetic", for example, feel a little crowded with ideas and transitions), but always with an impressive presence of carefully structured sounds. An ambitious collection that surely makes for difficult listening, but will also reward the careful listener. Nicely done.
Richard di Santo
Review of The Phonographers Union: Live on Sonarchy Radio from the All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com
More free-form and easy-flowing than musique concr¸te, much more concrete than experimental electronica, this music speaks to the mind and the soul, as some of these sounds are very familiar, but their combinations evoke surreal situations. Since there are too many details, too many events to possibly absorb and remember everything in one sitting, each listen provides a different experience. And even people usually closed to avant-garde music will be able to sense the poetry and the immediacy of this album. Highly recommended as a key statement in the development of "field recording" or "phonography" as a form of sound art.
Fran¨ois Couture
Review of The Phonographers Union: Live on Sonarchy Radio from The Wire, http://thewire.co.uk/
"Presented in its entirety, their set on Sonarchy Radio, a weekly hour-long show devoted to new music...is a work of gentle concentration. The resultant interplay between the various 'captures' displays an agreeable subtlety and sensitivity in its shifts of focus and range. Impossible to reduce to any kind of linear development or narrative, it reveals a bustling acoustic realm existing just outside our senses that deserves to be attended to."
Ken Hollings
Review of Searching for the Inverse Square from Vital Weekly, week 12 number 415
Music from Meri von Kleinsmid and Alex Keller have been reviewed
before (343 and 292 resp.) but those were solo projects. Here the two
offer a CD of four concerts they recorded together, in which they
loosely improvise with toys, radios and bent-circuits. Important
however is that they are moving through the space in which they
perform. The four recordings here are all done using a microphone
(but I'm sure can never capture the event if you didn't witness
them). In the opening piece 'Phar Lap' they move about using a
modified Texas Instruments 'speak 'n math' and five toy parrots
recording it while moving through the space. This is I think the best
piece of the CD and would have loved to seen this live (maybe a DVD
in the future). The other three tracks are twice as long as 'Phar
Lap' and unfortunally can't capture my attention through out. The
distorted radio waves and amplified toys take a lot of time and do
not necessarily go anywhere. Here the lack of visuals is most sad,
because it would have made more sense.
Frans DeWaard
Review of Searching for the Inverse Square from Igloo Magazine, http://www.igloomag.com/document.php?task=printview&id=694&category=reviews%5C%22
And they're off with the familiar start for "Phar Lap." Recorded live at Vital 5 Gallery in Seattle, musician/educator/curator Alex Keller and composer Meri von KleinSmid team up to create something eloquent and off-putting. By modifying electronic toys, these two have truly affected the sound effects of a racetrack circa 2010, when all live action will be replaced by free-form animation. With the radio dial spinning, a family is caught while playing hide-n-seek in and around a Seattle gas tank. These unintended collaborators make for a foil to the serious toll of AM radio preaching of illiteracy, AIDS and all things Driving Miss Daisy. DATs and mics gone wild! Actually, this is quite grounded, but the radio broadcasts do get to me, even as a creative AM (ab)user myself. But in these nineteen minutes the family's laughter just winds through frugally as the echoes of the static frequencies serve as the base. I recommend that Keller and KleinSmid attend a Negativland show near them, they are "almost" there on this track, it just lacks the inherent humor in the tongue-in-cheek self-appointed authoritarian language of the media. More like a radio-thon, "The Best Station Is No Station" certainly makes it point self-evident. The knob-centric "Focused on the Conflict at Hand" finds them in the basement of a local Community College sampling the resident Ataris. So let the games begin as the track captures the tempo of excitement. It's great to hear these old-fashioned gaming sounds, where you would certainly mistake them for perhaps the warp of say, a Theremin. "Message from Bunker 23" is aided in part by its outdoor surroundings with geese and other flying craft, mixed with found cassette starts and stops atop Magnuson Park in Seattle. The voiceovers discussing prostate cancer prevention and disease are contorted through crude physical manipulations. A dada threat is made loud, and unclear. In its ambiguity, the end result of ""Searching for the Inverse Square" is something that would make Kurt Schwitters smile a mile.
TJ Norris
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