Label: Ytterbium Format: CD
“What’s that sound?”, from the other room. Brain-wave sounds. Electroencephalograms. “Okay, whatever turns you on…” And so on. I think what he meant to ask was, “What were they thinking when they recorded this?” Which is an incredibly salient point. The sounds come from those brain-waves but what thoughts engendered those waves? So often these recordings by Nakajima-san are tied thematically but what lies behind those themes? The rhythmic ravens call names and cross a jungle to fly again, and again. One raven flows into another, and becomes a duck, dipping into the ocean, never coming up – instead flowing into a raven, and so forth, and so forth.
The brain-waves travel down through their brother pulse, onetwo onetwo, and then the waves come crashing down across the seashore, filling the fauntanals and seeking their own level. A measured time emits while the chaos of other signals tatters the synapscape. Various high pitches voyage through past the body’s systems until gradually fading to pitch-black. The sounds calm unto rumbles, pacing, waiting, as if asleep in some way. The sound – or the brain-waves themselves? It’s as if the sounds create a body for themselves – calling to other sounds to join cell to cell, growing and aging into something that will be revealed…
As if transmitted over radio waves – much like the body does – the sounds beat together, warble apart and build in intensity, gathering more laboured etchings with each thought carrying through. As the final moments of the piece group into one, they mist into vapor, just another passing notion.
-David Cotner-
