Odd cassette in a black box which is from terma, a minimalist lower-case anonymous thing from Quebec City which may also have some connection with Sweden.
So successful are they in anonymising their work that there are no names, no pack drill, and no sources given for the odd continuous sounds on the cassette which extend for 30 mins on each side. Even taking the artwork out of the black box does little to provide any further clues – it’s a high-contrast segmented image in black and white which might be anything from a sample of severe abstract art to a highly processed landscape photograph. “Anonymously contributed transmissions of unknown origin” is pretty much all we are told. The item under consideration is called I/II, and I see a further volume has emerged since we received this one, and most of the cassette versions of it have already sold out – probably extant in very tiny editions. Well, a strange blanked out roaring sound will await the lucky purchaser of this item, building up extremely slowly from near-silence in the best tradition of Francisco López, to reach a crescendo of overpowering organic static resembling arctic winds, or a tidal wave. Actually even “crescendo” would be a misleading characterisation, as the overall aesthetic shape of the transmission is lumpy and ungainly, lacking in form and definition. Feel free to stand underneath Niagara Falls for one hour if so disposed, but there’s no guarantee you’ll see the complete works of Giotto at the end of it.
I want to like this release a lot more, but I’m troubled by its blind devotion to the precepts of process art, and its general refusal of sublimation. In its favour, I do like the suggestion – perhaps implanted in the letter of the party who sent it to us – that it may have something to do with imminent apocalypse or end-of-days, a scenario for which such a tape makes a perfect soundtrack. We’re also intrigued by the notion of “transmissions” in general, perhaps suggestive of picking up beamed messages from the cosmos, or catching fragments of code on the shortwave receiver. If you can make it to the latter half of this exhausting marathon listen, you might find the last 15 minutes of serene and lonely drifty-drone refreshing to the brain; it’s as though the storm has cleared, the clouds have passed, and now all we can see is a pinpoint of light in the sky which might be an approaching spaceship, either sent to rescue the human race or obliterate it completely. Apologies, but one’s thoughts naturally tends towards calamity and nihilism when faced with such aural bleakitude. From 23rd November 2023.