Bleep

1 of only ✰ 250 vinyl editions ✰ of flash across the intervals, including a 4-page insert written under lockdown by one/all of the artists involved; sleeve art by Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs.

Like multiply the sides, an album which is something of a sister-piece to flash across the intervals, this is a challenging and highly original set of music, one that refuses easy interpretation. The sense that you’re about to engage with a singular composition is heightened even before you press play on flash across the intervals. One is encouraged to listen to these four tracks alone, in combination or all together at once, an effect that we once came across on The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka.

However, Powell’s sound-art is nothing like the post-White Album prog of Coyne and the gang. Instead, Powell focuses on sparse musique concrete. Across the record we find him taking one or two instruments at a time, turning them over carefully or pulling them apart until their tones start to resemble the most erstwhile glitches of Oval. A lot of the gurgling, sputtering sounds - sounds that might or might not be synths - push one to think of an ultra-oxidised version of PC Music, one where the original timbres have been mangled beyond recognition by a Laurie Tompkins or Territorial Gobbing.

Powell’s flash across the intervals is an electroacoustic experiment to be experienced track-by-track or, for the adventurous, all at once. 'multi-mendy 1-3 recombined' of which is taken from the video piece below, by Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs.