Quite where we are here I’m not entirely sure. I don’t really follow a lot of noise or musique concrète or, like, whatever this is. But that this is a 4CD boxset suggests that either Francisco Meirino‘s of some standing or the label owe him a favour for a hit or something. I certainly hope it is for being of some standing, because this is fine stuff — fine in the sense of being enjoyable and fine in the sense of having an exceptional amount of detail.
The difficulty with pinning The Process Of Significance down is that there’s a fair amount here that sits in a few places. There’s a degree of orthodox noise elements — pops and crackles and hissing static. But that in turn is absolutely lacking the blunt and blurry edges of standard noise anti-fidelity. It’s not quite sound art, in that there’s a sense of distinctly musical narrative — repetition and scarce melodic ideas.
It’s quite close to that sort of Wire-y found sound experimentalism except, again, too much detail and care. There’s a lot that’s super abrasive, but always with the kind of forensic mic detail that you don’t expect from aggressive music — what is distorted sounds more like swarming insects than flat-battery Walkmans. There’s four CDs here, so this may represent a narrative of Meirino’s work but I can’t quite discern it – it’s more like there’s a thematic difference between each album, but there’s not a great deal to separate it in terms of quality over time. That is, this is all mature work, and Meirino’s voice and style is clear througout. “Climax” from CD4 (The Ruins) is a gorgeous and carefully shifting work of jack lead hums marshalled subtly into something just on the perimeter of musicality, rhythms — what is repetitious and looping doesn’t reveal itself as such — and a drone which stabilises the whole thing into musical form only graces the piece towards the end. Which is not entirely unlike the pattern of CD1’s (Anthems For Unsuccessful Winners) opener, “Winning Is Overrated”, all dentist drills ceding to carefully peri-musical ambience.Tasteful is, I suspect, the term that I’m circling around. “You Know Nothing”, from CD2 (Recordings Of Voltage Errors), features a kind of chopped-up and fucked-about-with piano sample, possibly emulating decay and that sort of thing. The melodic element could’ve been trite and it’s not seemingly central; but the important thing, to my ears, is the way Meirino telegraphs the sonic decay in a crisp, sharp way. So easy to subordinate samples with obvious decay / distortion, but there’s a lot of care taken to make it sound like it’s breaking.
Difficult to describe all of this, of course; perhaps the most striking thing is that elements which are noises — and there’s a lot of them, fucked cables and electric arcs, etc — are never quite allowed to get away with being empty signifiers. He’s got really sharp ears, is my point. The blurb talks about needing decent speakers and, while obviously the What Hi-fi world of audiophilia wankers are bloated pricks, this is a real boon for decent gear. I recently got myself some pretty substantial headphones and I have to say this is an absolute treat. Like I can’t remember hearing something that renders so much of its difficult, bright, popping source material with so much clarity while not dwelling in the quieter end of things. Maybe that’s another important point: there isn’t that sound art sense of smugness about well-rendered source material — there’s a subtle but distinct presence of careful sonic narrative. It’s not always obviously “musical” in a lot of senses, but there’s enough rhythm and withheld melodic elements that it certainly feels like a sharp labour.Now I should warn that this isn’t always a “pleasant” set — a lot of the source material is definitely into the realm of amplified bee swarms and helicopter pile-ups. This is the sort of awkward sound world that is familiar to noise, but also the sort of fidelity and attention to detail that’s largely absent from that world. At sufficient volume the neighbours will fucking hate it, I’m sure, (or at least be convinced that an electrical fire is imminent). But principally this is well stimmy, exceptionally well recorded and sits along side the kind of sumptuous joy of a Bernard Parmegiani or Valerio Tricoli (I’m going to infer that Italian surnames are the best for this kind of thing). Hard recommend.
-Kev Nickells-
