From the high tension wires dressed in mesocyclonic fog on the cover (the usual dramatic Creative Sources booklet imagery), it wouldn't be out of line to conclude that this thorny slice of microsonic improv might set your teeth on edge. Turns out first impressions are once again correct. The duo of Pablo Rega (home made electronic devices) and Alfredo Costa Monteiro (pick-ups on turntable) seem intent on inventing new orthodoxies for their sound-sculpting, as evidenced by the ambiguity of their choice of instruments � minimalism shuffling ever so closer to virtual nonexistence. As electroacoustic improv beats a hasty retreat from anything resembling a free jazz idiom and aligns itself further with what gents like Stockhausen or Xenakis might have done, definitions go out the window, context as well. Finally, what is left is pure aural sensation, the sounds themselves the only thing left to contemplate and/or consider, a means to an end, then � or is it the other way around?

Neumatica's "music", if one can call it that, feels like the kinds of muted fireworks display more applicable to labels such as 12k or con-v, operations well versed in the onkyo school of digital minutiae. There is little doubt that the scratchy, febrile sounds here are initiated solely by improvisation, but that very methodology is why the majority of Alud seems to lack impetus. Rega and Monteiro manage to evoke some measure of vibrancy from their respective apparatuses, each of the three pieces moving through numerous electrical moods: jarring one moment, barely discernible the next, although the duo do regularly favor milieus carved out of adjunct hums, digital brine, machinic discharge, and a succession of coarse, grainy odds and ends. The third and final piece in particular moves through simulations of rocket-booster blast and sputtering feedback that still manages to adhere to minimalist traditions of making a little do a lot, though whether or not such inimical sounds tickle your cochlea or not is a matter of taste. Neumatica's itchy schematics make some of Keith Rowe's similarly etched work feel practically melodious by comparison; Rega and Monteiro's indulgences offer little more than brave noise.