Science and strategy define Adrian Moore’s 3D warfare and his inter-/inner-galactic travel, much of which takes place behind the veil of fog or darkness. But far from being cold and calculated, these four pieces elicit the supernatural wonder of good ballet or a sudden plot twist. Like much acousmatic music, his pieces approach sensory phenomena as portals to a unified field, decelerating, filtering or otherwise transforming sounds to alter perception/conception of their natures and our vantage point to one either planetary or atomic in magnitude.

While grand in scope, openers Battle and Counterattack are not as explosive as might be expected, balancing both halves of the word ‘warcraft’ in their demonstrations of the grand choreography of well-co-ordinated armies via masterful manipulation of ‘“scenes”, “feints” and “attacks”’ within multichannel space, resulting in corresponding episodes of subterfuge and sudden ambush. American cinema may have gulled us into believing that victory lies solely in gung ho bravado, but Moore’s bewildering stratagem draws strength from Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, keeping pace kinetic and unreadable.

Spaces outer and inner are examined in Nebula Sequence and Strings and Tropes, the former marked by startling accelerations and serene spells breaking the sense of near-constant motion amid ‘clouds of swirling dust and gas’, all of which arise from such mundane ingredients as rocks and ball bearings. I’m reminded of the peregrinations of the gestalt-mind protagonist of Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker as it tears through galaxies at the speed of enlightenment, witnessing the births and deaths of civilisations and constellations along the way; by and by coming to recognise the immeasurable intelligence of the stellar bodies. This living universe is just as evident in the dense and magnified vibrations of Strings and Tropes — the last of these majestic works — in which the listener shrinks to the size of an atom to listen to the titular strings as if they had the proportions of a nebula. Thus we encounter the more fascinating properties of a potentially paint-drying instrumental solo.

Met titels als The Battle en Counterattack zou je vermoeden dat deze elektroakoestische componist een luide oorlog zal ontketenen, maar daarvoor vallen de vier epische composities op deze cd toch iets te zacht uit. Tenzij het natuurlijk gaat om een mierenleger dat zich in alle richtingen tegelijk door een besteklade voortbeweegt. Hoewel Moore de originele school van Pierre Schaeffer blijft volgen (tapes, musique concrète), zijn laptops niet langer taboe, en experimenteert hij ook graag met de mogelijkheden van de moderne opnametechnologie, vooral multikanalen. Hierdoor speelt er zich bijzonder veel tegelijk af tussen onze oren. En Moore heeft ook nog een andere verrassing in petto, want Nebula Sequence evolueert tot een aangename zweefoefening met onmiskenbare ambient-kwaliteiten.

Adrian Moore’s Séquences et tropes on empreintes DIGITALes offers an alternate future, sonically-speaking, again it’s in a tradition, this time electroacoustic, which like Der Zyklus has remained immune to trends because it’s above and beyond them… it’s far off on another sonic planet, the gravitational pull of which is worth succumbing to, although it’s easy to resist, this being sound rather than music… and we know how easy that is to dismiss… but you’d be stupid to do so… and you don’t want to appear stupid, do you? Electroacoustic sound-makers aren’t stupid; they’re proper technicians who may not be much good at shopping, or cooking, although I don’t want to suggest that of Alan Moore… but the impression I get is that they absolutely live for sound, the sounds in their heads transcribed by technology in fine detail… as can be heard on this selection from 2012/13/14 — but dates don’t matter, except to signify the relevance, ongoing, of this artform, exemplified by Counterattack, which follows The Battle, but what kind of warfare is being conducted? Is it between brain cells? Or next century viral microbes in the war for our minds? Either way, Moore’s creations will rearrange the stuff between your ears.