VITAL WEEKLY NUMBER 1485 :: COAGULANT NEW ALBUM REVIEWED BY FRANS DE WAARD

A brilliant review by Frans de Waard, a legendary figure in tape music and electroacoustic sound experimentation. Frans de Waard writes in his weekly report Vital Weekly #1485: “It’s been a while since I last heard music by Fabio Kubic, also known as Coagulant, and that’s a pity. From the few works I heard and reviewed (Vital Weekly 1280, 1363, 1240, 1421, 1382, 1326, and 1349), I understood he’s a man of field recordings and captures places, and then maybe does some treatments. I like to see his work as sonic architecture, capturing reflections of sounds within spaces. And that’ll be places with buildings, but on this new work he has recording from the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats, “vast open landscapes possessing distinct acoustic identities shaped by their ecological conditions and atmospheric interactions”. I couldn’t say if that’s true, as I have not been to these places. Kubic uses geophones and ambisonic environmental microphones to capture these spaces, which, to the uninitiated ear, may sound like wind blowing down a microphone. Whatever else he does to the recordings remains a bit of a mystery, but I’m sure some kind of processing is involved. The album consists of one piece, precisely 74 minutes long, which moves through various sections. The opening segment, approximately ten minutes long, features a ‘blowing down the microphone’ element. Still, the subsequent section is quite electronic, perhaps incorporating real-time sound manipulation into this environment, a spontaneous process. And so the piece moves on, from one section to the next, each very atmospheric and drone-like, although not exclusively. Around 25 minutes, there’s a whole section of what sounds like harbour sounds. Throughout, each section is quite minimal, but Coagulant knows when it’s time to move on to the next one. Dark music, obviously, and very well put together; this is something that one should indeed hear as a single, uninterrupted piece, preferably with added volume and incredible immersive audio surround. Not music to please and ignore, as is the idea of ambient music, but to experience without any other interruption or distraction. Another excellent work in an otherwise great catalogue of works.” (FdW)

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