Infrasound Collective - Owasso Night Atlas
I love the little tag line that came with this compilation of work from the artists associated with the Infrasound Collective: "a work of art sabotage sponsored by the muse." An explanation -- I hope -- for the assault that sweeps over you with track 4 on this disc. This is your only warning.
Owasso Night Atlas begins with long, processed flute tones by Mark Feuver, drifting in from the distance like dissonant cries of wounded birds lost out in the darkness of the Everglades. It is the wind whistling through old, rusted auto bodies on the banks of dry rivers. Even in decay the muse must thrive because as these processed tones collapse into a striking snarl of near-static, there is something human and lonely about the sound. The father and son team within The International Bankers layer static and thick bass over a mad calliope, spinning us into a dervish nightmare lost amid the circus tents.
And then Ed Petry launches into his 'I've got ADD and I'm whacked out on speed and crack but I'm a real huge fan of Jimi Hendrix' routine. Which thoroughly fucks up the groove so nicely laid down by The Grassy Knoll just moments prior. Therein lies the art and the sabotage, dovetailed so precisely. And it smacks us again with the sudden gong of the "Steel Mill Improvisation" after the drifting seascape of Absorption's "Dead Slow".
While Intrasound point man Brian Siskind does some impressive cut-and-paste under his fognode::: guise with material from Michael Shrieve, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, and Klaus Schulze, fellow collective member Layng Martine III heats us with "Globe" -- something a little warmer than his usual outings under the Corporal Blossom banner. Christopher DeLaurenti haunts with the sounds of "Sylvian's Wood" and Siskind closes us out with a final ambient excursion.
Filled with contributions from a number of luminaries on the Seattle avant-garde and experimental scene (including an excerpt from an illicit Tentacle-inspired improvisation inside an abandoned Seattle steel mill), Owasso Night Atlas takes you into the night and asks that you close your eyes and listen to the darkness. Not everything you hear is pleasant, but all of it moves you. That is what the muse does after all.
Infrasound Collective [2001]
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