The Quiver album (MIKROTON CD 64) by Yui Onodera and Stephen Vitiello is a maximal delight of enjoyable electronic sounds, some of them almost melodic in their construction, and as such slightly at odds with most of the music I associate with this label whose aesthetic leans towards the minimal, the austere, and the slow-moving riddle couched in cryptical sphinx-like terms. To begin with, you need only read the credit list on Quiver – multiple instruments, lots of field recordings and much processing were used, all layered together in these seamless gobbets and slices of non-specific musical wampery. Onodera has surfaced here a couple of times, most notably with his fine solo record Semi Lattice, where we enjoyed his inventive re-processing guitar and piano overdubs and noted his rather romantic spirit (another aspect that seems decidedly non-Mikroton in spirit; I always imagine, perhaps wrongly, that everyone who releases a Mikroton record is a stern, unforgiving realist by nature). American Vitiello was probably first heard in these pages as far back as 1998, with his Light Of Falling Cars album, but since then he’s worked with Lawrence English, Machinefabriek, Steve Roden, and many like-minded altruistic players. These eight instrumentals are untitled, presumably with an aim to be as non-associative as possible, and the cover art is printed in grey monotones – yet to me the record evokes all manner of rich visions, many of them in full colour. From 30th October 2018.
