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  Toshimaru Nakamura & Mark Trayle 
  Stationary
  (Creative Sources) 


  
   review by Max Schaefer
  2009-04-08
Toshimaru Nakamura & Mark Trayle: Stationary (Creative Sources)

A near hour of incessantly fizzling activity, laptopian Mark Trayle and no-input mixing board operator Toshimaru Nakamua apply a fastidious concentration on the minutiae of textural and coloristic detail within these unpredictably evolving modules of activity. Both deal in subtle gradations of texture, dynamic, and harmonic interval, moving from slow glacial slides of tone to static pops and sibilant blasts. While extremes of loud and soft is something of a cliche of such new music, the duo here telescope the material into a detailed middle ground, where everything resounds like the different browns and reds in a Rothko. Trayle nudges melodic intervals away from equal temperament into a spectrum of micro-intervals, and Nakamura deals lucidly with finer tones, playing with a coolly objective approach that suits the material well. This results in a series of compositions that are both enigmatic and deadpan and expansive and elongated.

The disc opens with an opaque stream of grey static, gurgling and retching. It is initially entirely impervious to any manner of decipherment, but is gradually opened up to a subtle phrasing of expansive and contraction, which becomes ever more explicit on the other two works presented here. At nearly half an hour in length, the rubberized tones and bristling static of the second composition are at once controlled and stable and yet white-knuckled and high-strung, oscillating with ease from a surprisingly deep calm to modest blasts of thick sonic mud. In this way the sound palette constantly upsets itself while remaining consistent and orderly enough to sustain interest. The final work is even more of a winding aural road trip that travels from dripping coats of sheen to whining static emissions and clouds of chopping noise and billowing aural dust. In packing potentially common gestures into short durations, the work becomes spidery and well incised, and contributes to the albums obliquely communicative nature.







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