Latest batch of clipped sonic experiments from Dutch player Spruit…from Repetitive Parts to Raw, evidence that he’s following an ever more restricted path with his actions, involving what he calls “severe editing”.
His source material on Drums & Sounds (NO LABEL) may derive from drums, and synthesised drums, but digital mixing desks also come into the chain somewhere, and he pours the streams of sonic data into his laptop where they may face the knife of destiny. Certainly if his aim was to transform natural sound into something almost completely inhuman, he’s managed that with singular success, only allowing the briefest glimpse of a segment of creaking metal to intrude on his otherwise bleak universe. If a drumbeat is suffered to appear, it carries a cascade of doom somewhere between the heartbeat of an approaching dragon and the footsteps of a fearsome ogre. The trademark of true Spruitism however still resides in the splices and cuts, the arrangement of his material into a collaged image which appears determined to confound common sense, to refuse conventional linear listening. I often find the results confusing rather than surprising, but it may be possible to detect the thread that helps us navigate our way around this labyrinth. The labyrinth is Spruit’s own brain…to examine it would be like examining the logfiles from a computer process, vast screeds of unintelligible information separated by timestamps and wrapped into neat rows…it would be nice to think he knows these contours so well that he can intuitively select an appropriate pathway to lead us to the golden globe, but at the same time there’s so much apparent randomness in play; no two pieces of the jigsaw match up, no two snowflakes are alike, and in any case those snowflakes turn into stalactites as we attempt to register their fleeting appearances.
I would like to throw myself into joining Spruit’s cause with more revolutionary fervour, but the sound he makes is just so cold and unengaging, as though he himself were not especially enthusiastic about the process of making the work, or fully satisfied with the results. However, he does urge the listener to participate through the use of technology – good hifi reproduction, and a set of headphones, are his personal recommendation, indicating there are subtleties and nuances in these Jovian canals that must be scrutinised, and the full effect of immersing yourself in this airless enclosed world can only be achieved by diving to the bottom of the ocean, and staying there. (03/01/2023)