Antimatter is California's Xopher Davidson and this 45 minute piece, released by San Francisco's Auscultare Research is Davidson's second collaboration with Swedish/Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski. On their previous CD ("Function Generator" on Portugal's Sirr label) they set themselves a limit of 100 Hz frequencies for a very clinical work full of super-low bass vibrations. This time the title "KHZ" leads you to believe they've expanded the frequency range quite a bit. The opening minutes feature a slow pulsing bass tone loop EQ'ed down mercilessly. The sound is clean, thick and heavy, with just a slight suggestion of a trebly scratch around the edges. The pristine sounds of undistorted bass tones can be a bit difficult on the ears but this bass noise is pleasurable. The bass gets into your head in a way that can only be described as a physical effect more than an auditory sensation, as real or imagined additional tones ring through your head endlessly. A rhythmic beating builds up as the suffocating tones seem to multiply. Drawn-out purring drones flow through the mix, as do a few higher pitched morse-code bleeps but the bass dominates the first ten minutes before the frequency range opens up. Midrange sonorities appear suddenly around the 13 minute mark- I jumped at their intrusion, actually. Click-loops emerge, bass levels are brought down and the piece reaches a high-end chirping peak around the 27 minute mark. The click-loops bring to mind Ryoji Ikeda or Carsten Nicolai, or the more desolate moments of Pansonic but the feel here is a bit more intense- and you never lose the sense that something really dangerous is about to assault your ears at any moment. But the austere feel remains throughout- and the piece slowly winds down over the course of a slow-moving 45 minutes. There are no liner notes on this release- except for a cryptic quote: "rebounding = junk of live" credited to R. Selavy (Duchamp's readymade alter-ego) though the connection between this music and the quote is not easily found- no surprise there I suppose. The CD is graced by beautifully understated graphic design (by Randy Yau, presumably), with the letters KHZ cut into the black cardstock cover so that the silver CD disc surface peeks through. Even the barcode is tastefully inserted along the spine, the silver and black lines becoming the most active graphic piece in a delicate composition.
Released by Auscultare Research
Available from Ground Fault
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