Positive* (MILLE PLATEAUX MP71) by Neuro…No Neuro – set of short electronic pieces heavy on the manipulation and processing…this American fellow Kirk Markarian has been releasing his work like coloured balloons in the sky since about 2017, often on the Audiobulb label or as self-released file editions, but in 2023 the German label Mille Plateaux gave him a soapbox for the Compartments file-release, and now here’s this new CD from them.
Mr Neuro is based in Tucson Arizona, where he also does painting and abstract animated videos, in between his synthesiser experiments. This one arrived with verbal hints and clues that aren’t especially easy to decode, but it may have something to do with human memory and its transience. How easy these “thin slices” from the brain can dissipate in the morning air, or are “swept out to the sea in granules”, as the creator would have it. Accordingly, the music here tends to align itself with a template of disconnectedness and a bemused, abstracted air, and many of the sounds generated are very airy and lonely. Additionally, Neuro…No Neuro seems to make use of some “scrambling” device on his machines, to disrupt his musical chain of thought in case it starts becoming too coherent or predictable.
This could have resulted in something unpalatable in the wrong hands, but it’s plainly evident that Markarian is executing his nimble moves with care, patiently building his thesis and – in places – coming close to evoking something about the way the human mind, and its memory, operate. (08/12/2023)