Bleep

Techno stalwart Surgeon’s Electronic Recordings from Maui Jungle, Vol. 1 provided a rare insight into his talents outside his subject area. Released under his own name, Anthony Childs, on established institution Editions Mego in early 2015, the English producer recorded the album on the Buchla Music Easel during a trip to the Hawaiian jungle. With Vol. 2, Child returns to Maui to resume his explorations into the fascinating sonic intersection between the tropical forest and the modular synth.

Using the jungle’s environment as a backdrop for his real-time improvisations, Childs refrained from additional layering: diffused insect and high-pitched bird sounds fill the space between the octaves of ‘Old Technology’; the crickets and rustling in ‘A Nightfall of Diamonds’ not only mirror the synth’s grippy texture, they also indicate a nocturnal scene, diurnal voices falling silent. At other times, the thicket finds its way into the compositions more subtly, evolving as a background of drones against the minimalist meanderings of ‘Cellular Integration’, or integrating seamlessly into the syncopated rhythms and string movements of ‘Nine Personality Type Map’. Childs welds his fusion to the extent that the Buchla becomes one with its environment, rendering imagining one without the other impossible. With that, much like its predecessor, Vol. 2 bears witness to the astonishing synergy effects of synthesised and natural sounds.