CONSTELLATION RECORDS August 24th 2018
Accumulating debris of clicks and waves of broken sound. Shards of something smoother, fractured from somewhere else. This is Industrial music for the computer age. Almost ambient in creating an environment more than a musical shape, the sharp edges and cracks break through that façade.
At times unsettling and fidgety with an effect like the Aphex Twin, other times like a partly-broken calm. The beat shifts and the speed changes with a cracked time signature that makes this an uneasy ride with no dull moments when your attention might drift.
William Jourdain, the man behind Automatisme has been pumping out tracks via Bandcamp since his 2016 Momentform debut, both alone and in collaboration. This Québécois works with field recordings and modular synthesis to experiment with sound and texture. You may be able to pick out the sounds of forests, caves and even waiting rooms, seeking to blend the psychogeography of supermodernity into a sound for this moment and place. Yet he allows accident and happenstance though probability-based digital patches and generative routines.
Things twitch and snap. Glitchy experiences echo the digital aspects of life today. Noise fields are never as smooth as imagined, the faults in digital reality keep us on our toes. Unstable compositions sit on the borderline between multiple genres.
It’s a rewarding album, full of purpose and possessing a distinctive character.