With Pink Nothing, electronic musician and hardware constructor Tom Richards has pursued ideas on Daphne Oram‘s Oramics synthesizer and re-imagined it for a modern world, constructing his own and using it for these four lengthy and meditative, if somewhat unsettling, minimalist masterpieces.
It opens with the title track that feels at first like an exercise in simplistic electronic repetition, the backbone of which is a simple heartbeat, a slowed-down techno beat, with an edge that is not euphoric but somehow edgier. Extra rhythmic textures are introduced that subtly change the landscape and move it from something meditative to something more disorientating, especially when the key changes. which kind of throws you as something unexpected.
It is the gradual microtonal shifts that really work under the surface, like snakes constantly moving underwater upsetting the pattern on the surface, but leaving no visible trace of their physical presence. It is a mixing of ingredients that provides you with something surprising at the end.
“Pink Something”, on the other hand, while still utilising the heartbeat motif is more caustic, with the sounds further distorted and pushing the edginess a step further. It is far less steady, as if purposefully trying to unsettle. The introduction of bright spikes of noise feels like somebody suddenly opening shutters, allowing daylight into a supposedly darkened room and disturbing the ambience, then shutting them again. It seems more high-pitched, more panicky. The second side continues in a similar vein, but the appearance on “Unresolved Resolution” of what sounds like synthesised violin being stroked randomly lends some chaos to the distracted beat and on the live track that closes the album. On “The Lost Microphone”, the violin sound is replaced by a cello which lends an air of formality to the piece. It doesn’t stop it from feeling as though you have been left alone in an abandoned hospital; machines spiking at different moments in different rooms, the only real constant that inevitable heartbeat that accompanies you all the way through the album.As a suite of experimental pieces, Pink Nothing disturbs and draws you inwards in equal measure. It is a fine addition to the Nonclassical catalogue.
-Mr Olivetti-
