Source of Uncertainty is one of those records which pushes the boundaries of expectation quite a bit further than a cursory glance at the list of influences might suggest. So maybe there is techno, electro, Detroit and Berlin-style electronic music in here, and certainly a sense of experiment that is worthy of the term; but Giovanni Napoli’s second Haunter Records release as SOMEC follows on the heels of his delightfully titled Arbitrary Function Generator cassette in a dazzling splash of often highly abstracted tweaks, trills, rhythms and bleeps which are very much their own thing.
This is a trick that Napoli pulls off with the unnerving skill of someone who knows that, while it’s good to get lost in the process, that all those gates and routes, the modulations and layers are inherently tweakable to the performer’s delight, that if the listener is to get right into the depths alongside the person with their hands on the controls, then there necessarily has to be a bond constructed between them.
This SOMEC does not by simple repetition and trance-induction of the more familiar linear kind. Rather, Napoli lets his machines have their head, no doubt patching and switching to his heart’s content in the delicate dance of human and music-making machinery engaged in febrile feedback sessions that, when they result in the six gems of the kind which make up Source of Uncertainty, are apt to invigorate the possibilities of analogue synthesis as they unfold.-Linus Tossio-
