EKG

Few albums have been more accurately titled. Though Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn) and Ernst Karel (trumpet) come from acoustic backgrounds, analogue electronics dominate these five pieces, creating what Gino Robair termed "voltage made audible." The duo manages their modular synthesizers the old-school way—"by twisting knobs, flipping switches, yanking patch cords in and out, and sometimes using their own fingers as conductors between cables and instruments," as Bill Meyer describes in Dusted.

The resulting music is highly tactile: low-end hums, feedback tendrils, static blasts, and motor buzzes deployed with "a palpable sense of contour within a dynamic range that goes from loud and in your face to distant and small." When the horns emerge—as at the end of "Drift" where lonely brass cries rise from what seems a collective unconscious—they're freighted with wordless emotion, so integrated into the electronic fabric that distinguishing sources becomes nearly impossible.

Electricals was assembled from performances and rehearsal recordings made miles and years apart, then meticulously edited. Meyer observes that "the music isn't just played, it's constructed in a way that yields the best of two approaches"—each piece sports the spontaneous interaction of total improvisation but develops with the inevitability that hindsight affords.

Richard Pinnell in The Watchful Ear notes the music rewards close attention. On first pass he found it merely pleasing, but "listening on headphones in bed early this morning revealed a lot more, the tension simmering between the two layers of sound became clear." Brian Olewnick in Just Outside detects "a subtle narrative flavor" and finds "new facets on each hearing, always a good sign."

This is music that exists in productive tension—between acoustic and electronic, improvised and composed, the aggressive and the meditative. Essential listening for anyone interested in the fertile ground where performance and electronic manipulation interpenetrate.