DI24
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Cat#: DI24 Artist: Fragments Title: Kinetic Sphere Date of Release: 6/30/2009 Edition Size: 150 (hand numbered w/ballpoint pen) Materials: C20 (BASF chrome stock in “smoky” 5-screw shell), full-color printed adhesive labels, full-color print on semigloss cardstock, rubber-stamped matte white adhesive label, soft polybox. Availability: Sold out at source. |
Description:
Those of you who’ve spent any serious time in Cleveland know that it’s barely possible to leave your house without getting pancaked by some anvil or other of phenomenally damaged tapes. Jeff Hatfield and Zach Troxell, aka Fragments, were responsible for the last such anvil to have my name on it before I split for Philly last year, and their self-titled debut left me scratching my head at the point of impact for months, trying to fathom what the hell they could possibly be THINKING. Then again, as Hatfield confided in me at the bar after Fragments turned in a tense and gnarled basement set at the Champagne of Fests III this past March, “I’m not even really sure that I have a head right now,” so perhaps I’m overanalyzing it and the crux of the project is in fact the very billion-yard stare amply documented on the Synthetic Spremulli dvdr and made more than audible on a slew of subsequent releases for Hanson, Pizza Night, A Sounddesign, and Tusco Embassy.
Regardless, I can think of few contemporary synth projects as genuinely weird as this one, and Kinetic Sphere is incredibly gnarled stuff, kicking off like a steel door opening onto the gentle throb of miniature worlds under glass and staging it’s first crescendo as the inhabitants discover space travel, summoning a great purring of afterburners and flashing of lasers, then hanging out around the rafters in a cloud of acrid smoke. Side two begins with a wonderful settled/unsettled Drift Studies-esque detuned test tone that gradually accumulates filigree before blindsiding the listener with a split-second glimpse into the abyss, a pendulum that only swings farther and farther, and an ending reminiscent of the coda of Schnitzler’s “Meditation”, in which dub space, once appropriated, becomes literal, carceral, and oppressive, and our heroes keep on throttling the cosmic slot machine amid a beery haze, in a vain attempt to escape the tape itself.
Notes: N/A
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