Bleep

John Chantler’s second album for Room 40 sees him turn modular analog systems into captivating drones. For Even Clean Hands Damage The Work, the London-based artist travelled to Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion to record sounds with its vintage synthesizers Serge and the Buchla 200. The album derives its noisy, abrasive textures from spectral and time domain processing, perfected over a period of two years. Put together as two side-long suites, the five movements develop into immersive pieces. Chantler plays with dynamics as much as he does with contrasts – whereas the A side is based around deep frequencies, the B side abducts us to an alien world of alarm-pitched sine tones.