"Tim Olive returns for his third album on Notice, a rare solo outing from this avid collaborator. Ribbon is a document of his highly developed relationship with amplified object manipulation, in a manner most cathartic and engaged, and yet informed by compositional sensibility.

This release is constructed from multiple tracks of a variety of sound sources recorded in his studio in Kobe, Japan; these tracks have then been edited and layered, in shifting densities and evolving textures. Despite the abrasiveness of these recordings, there is a certain kind of sensuality in their interactions.

One may sense that these pieces can be touched, as if the air has become solidified, like slowly forming glass, flecked with mineral impurities, a movement shuddering in locked-place, she

"[...] Olive works at home with his tools, including objects and amplification. These are his primary tools, but unlike his live work, he creates various layers of his playing at home. Effectively he plays with other people, even when the 'other' is Olive himself. In good musique concrète, these layers are edited and mixed to make a more or less coherent whole. What I find interesting is that Olive, at the same time, maintains an improvised music sensibility. Not in a chaotic way, hectic rumbling and shaking of his amplified objects, but moving them around carefully, giving room to them, not editing too precisely, but carefully letting a mistake (what is a mistake anyway), and at the same time taking care that sounds don't overstay their welcome. Using amplification allows for a particular distortion in his music, but that too is worked on with the highest effort, not to create a noise record, but allow the noise to be an equal partner in the music. At times this sounds like a classical noise record, early New Blockaders in 'Ribbon 2', and then again, something introspective and 'quiet', culminating in the excellent drone ending of 'Ribbon 4'. At thirty minutes, perhaps short, but all the same, quite powerful as well."-Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly