Ostracon: Unauthorized Modifications Review
91/100
Mark down yet another excellent experimental electronica album to come out of Minneapolis this year. The latest is Unauthorized Modifications, a cassette from electrosmith John Keston and drummer Graham O’Brien, who perform together as Ostracon. The duo strikes a perfect balance between gunmetal digitalism and fleshy live percussion, between compositional maturity and improvisational uncertainty.
While O’Brien is busy jamming away, Keston starts manipulating home-coded software to synthesize melodies. “The application samples video and displays it either normally or inverted so it looks as though you’re looking into a mirror,” explains Keston of his software on Audio Cookbook. “Each frame is analyzed for brightness, then the X and Y data of the brightest pixel is converted into a MIDI note. The X axis is used to select a pitch, while the Y axis determines the dynamics. As users move, dance, gesture, or draw in front of the capture device, notes are generated based on a predetermined scale.” Sounds pretty neat—I’m not a musician, so the description isn’t entirely crystal clear—but what I like about Keston’s software in a live context is that, a) replicating any given passage would be difficult, if not impossible, so you should be hearing something new every performance; and b) that the actual substance of the song will change with the audience-band engagement and the Keston-computer awareness. (Or, in other words, depending on how much everyone’s dancing.)
So that’s how they do it. But what does it sound like? The short answer: a dilapidated jukebox at a groovy space casino. Keston has a variety of tones up his sleeve, from crystalline musicbox loops to snake-charming drone lullabies to vectored electro riffs to surreptitiously bellowing organs. The sonic landscape he paints changes often and naturally, like sand blowing across a desert basin. But let’s not forget about O’Brien: Without his loose, jazzy drumming, the album would sound New Age-y and spineless. O’Brien can do it all: lock a groove, tease with restraint, tumble off the experimental deep-end, or ignite into Gatling gun freak outs.
The only thing I’d ask from this album isn’t supposed to be in the mix in the first place. Some prominent bass—be it from a sample or from the synth—would really round out the album. Granted, the point of the album isn’t to be well-rounded but to juxtapose the artificial and the animalistic in a certain aesthetic. And to that, it exceeds greatly.
Stream the album and download a song at the Unearthed Music Site
By Will Wlizlo (Utne Reader)
Writer / co-founder
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[…] that we release last week has been reviewed quite favorably on the popular music blog, Reviler.org. Click the link for details. Here’s another sample of music from our release show last […]