Phil Julian has cropped up now and again here on the blog often performing in a collaborative context…I see from his website he’s done it with notable droners, sound artists, improvisers, and even some of the harsh noise Gods such as The New Blockaders, The Haters, and Nihilist Assault Group. His Between Landing (AUDITORY FIELD THEORY AFT010 / AUTHORISED VERSION AV039) is a teamup with Ben Owen, comes sleeved in one of Owen’s signature letterpress sleeves, and is a joint release on Julian’s own label and Auditory Field Theory. A splendid dose of slow and utterly abstracted crackly stuff…it’s a good meeting of subdued electronics and computer noise (plus guitar and prepared recordings), producing the effect of a very focussed and long stare. It’s as if you met a man with enormous eyeballs who couldn’t ever close his eyes, and was now gazing at with the aid of various mechanical ocular devices, from telescope to microscope, scrutinising your inner being. Miguel A Garcia has got this sort of thing down pat, only his whirring burrs also sound slightly menacing, whereas Between Landing feels somewhat more benign, even if it is abstracted and mysterious. From October 2014.
