Label: NTT (available exclusively via Touch) Format: DVD (Region 0, NTSC)
Sometimes, nothing satisfies quite like the immersive intensity of a minimalist audio-visual feast for eyes, ears and cerebellum, and Formula provides more than adequate satisfaction on all counts. Starting with the packaging, which is realised with superb attention to detail and layout, from the gallery-quality booklet on heavy white paper encased in a protective plastic slipcase to the spacious listings of times and dates, releases and installations, complete with schematics and hall diagrams.
The DVD menus are equally straightforward – white screeens, titles, links. The disc divides into two sections, Installations and Concert. The former has eight selections, presented in both stereo and AC3 Surround Sound for the full audio impact of works which were created with immersive listening in mind. So it’s possible to recreate the Millenium Dome experience in any space, suitable or otherwise, to repaint a convenient hallway white and pipe “A” from the Hayward Gallery along its length and to set a solo designer chair at the centre of a suitably reflective room to enjoy the hiss, blip’n’rumble of “db” . Failing that, it’s quite possible to set the disc playing on a mono TV set and to forget its even a video thanks to the blank screen and strangely directional qualities even this method provides – the sussurus and switching glitches and the barely audible hums make effective backround/foreground motions from definite perception to unsettling ambience of uncertain location.
By contrast, Concert is assuredly there to be watched and involved with – to let the visual and audio stimuli accumulate to satiation point. From the opening emergence of a single white line across the screen of The Garden Hall, Tokyo in October 2001 the piece sets out its structure with logical precision, while allowing random acts of chaos their own (regulated) space. Each blip and warble has its accompanying visual – a sliding crosshair, a brightly-twitching slash, a scanline made visible as if the screen had overclocked its refresh rate into loss of vertical hold.The three variations on “Headphonics” insinuate themselves into strict rhythmic layers, bass pulsation to abstract hiss and constant ripples of pure tonal undercarriage ripped with micro-shards of pink noise. No simulations of analogue sounds, no snare or bass drum, just the electronic basics accomapny pattern variations of increasing complexity, with grids stepping to a hypnotic Techno groove.
Then the rapid-fire number theory waterfall of “+../-” sweeps down the stage screen, reflected in the polished floor, the fractal tumble of digits offering ASCII animations in increasing abstract depth and close-up resolution, sonically as much as visually. So when the surprise American announcer states “it’s the most beautiful ugly sound in the world” with a shift of gear into rapid-fire subliminal images and morse-code and voice comms bursts, it’s hard to disagree. The urgent demands of a hyperspeed transmission shot forth from a coruscating diamond fold into a reprise of the earlier elision of line and cross to the bristling electronic pulse – the intrusion of organic imagery jars at first, then becomes another stimulus to match the linear acceleration bouncing across a stereo soundscape not entirely devoid of its own warmth among the accreted sequences of trills and rips.
For the finale, it’s back to the numbers, in square formation this time, winding down as the formerly precise lines degrade into slow motion wipes and fades. The music matches the hesitant mood, adjusting the flow of time into perceptible passing of the seconds. Bursts of massively-accellerated noise, aided by strobing white screens preface the return of stripes of broader activity and vaguely identifiable real-world origin, the rhythms by now sparkling and bubbling into liquid activity. The fade up into blinding light fizzles out, literally and acoustically – the end is sudden and complete, sparking an unsettling shift into reality.
Note: Formula is currently only available as a limited edition direct from Touch for 25 or 40 Euros + postage.
-Antron S. Meister-
