david kristian -
sawdust sinedust squaredust CD
Pandora
Canadian electronic
musician creates another melodically and rhythmically advanced
masterpiece:
With each release, the prolific David Kristian makes a strong case for
his prominence among Canadian electronic-music producers (perhaps only
Richie Hawtin can equal him). Bringing the rigor of a serious
neo-classical composer to domain (IDM) overrun with laptop jockeys has
set Kristian apart from most of his peers. A
rare abstainer from sampling, he builds tracks the old fashioned way --
but his music thankfully eludes the quaint whiff of analog synth
fetishizing Sawdust Sinedust Squaredust kicks off with
Sweepmuffing/Ipana, the most brilliant track Aphex Twin never wrote
(imagine the eeriest cuts of his Selected Ambient Works Vol. II
but with better dynamics). This
track -- and the nine others on this disc -- proves that Kristian's
command of melody, timbre and rhythm is virtually unrivaled among
today's electronic musicians. His
skill with dynamics also lends his music an intensity that has the power
to drive even the hardiest listener insane (this is a good thing). For
example Scraping Good Feeling possesses madly
relentless sequencers that recall Tangerine Dream's
Phaedra,
but cranked up to post-millennial pressure. The
only drawback to this album is its relative lack of availability; you
can only purchase it via Kristian's Web site"
- Dave
Segal (Alternative Press)
"This
new collection moves him back into the use of rhythms, which combine with his
other-worldly synth sounds to produce tracks that will appeal to lovers of '90s
ambient-techno like Aphex
Twin and Autechre. Several of the tracks also share
textures from the '70s and an unavoidable comparison with Tangerine Dream."
-
Chris Twomey
(Tandem)
"While
he's still in a world all his own, he brings the beats back - subtle, strange rhythmic
constructions. Add a universe of knob-twiddled, synthesized sound, then merge the two and
you've got another notch on the belt of the city's most prolific sound scientist."
-
T’Cha Dunlevy (Montreal
Gazette)
"David
Kristian has released a number of CDs, and his songs appear on
compilations by Worm Interface, Schematic, and a bunch of other
reputable IDM labels. So Kristian's work is well-known (at least, in the
weird world of electronic music). That said, I was actually surprised by
the music I found on this release. Unlike the intense, beat-laden,
frenzied music one would expect to find from a Schematic artist, I found
complex yet quiet music that, while exploring various levels of rhythm
and melody, nevertheless maintained an almost atmospheric or even
ambient approach. The title is a pun on the word sawdust and the saw,
sine, and square waveforms that are the building blocks of electronic
musical composition. In other words, whereas sawdust is the fine,
chewed-up remains of a dead tree, the saw, sine, and square dust heard
here are the fine, chewed-up remains of electronic music. So instead of
a bunch of hard beats, loud noises, and screeching FXs, we get soft,
almost invisible 808 and CGD beats that hover above and behind large
atmospheric soundscapes of deep, often dark synth sounds. "Pegel" is a
good example of this. It starts out with a scattered, even dusty rhythm
that pans back and forth, disappears for a few moments, then returns,
accompanied by a growing organ melody that keeps growing and growing,
even as the beat picks up more sounds. Pretty soon the melody and the
beat are intertwined, with some CGD distorting into the melody and some
synth sounds picking up tempo to become rhythm. It seems like a simple
song, but it isn't. There are at least six or seven different patterns
working together here, and the fact that they all seem to make sense
together is a testament to Kristian's skill as a musician. This is an
intelligent work from an established artist whose work is as good and as
intelligent as electronic music gets."
- Haunted Ink
(Top 25 Experimental Electronic CDs)
