Alex Keller
Sleep Room
USA ELEVATOR BATH CD eeaoa069 (2024)
Another fine release from our favourite heavy-duty Texan droning noise-wrangler and process magician.
For those who want the juicy details of process, he made this one with electromagnetic transducers, possibly home-made at that (weaving coils of wire around the spine of a steel rod while wearing night vision goggles), and waved them wildly when standing near to various power sources, a list of which is helpfully included inside. Some of these sources are domestic and commonplace, others are outdoors and scary. I’m lying about the scary part, but on the other hand I’d hate to be the one running after a commuter train or urban bus holding one of these weird cancerous sticks in each flaky mitt. It’s when you take your art out into the wild like this that the rubber really hits the fan. I mean the public actions of an artist can be mistaken and misunderstood, and perhaps even lead to jail time, but if you have the courage of your convictions then you must leap out of the doghouse and go for gold.
I have no real concept of what a transducer actually does – useless to lecture a ninny like me about “energy conversion”, as I can’t even turn on an electric kettle without poisoning half the neighbourhood and causing fish to leap out of the pond in my direction. Alex Keller, conversely, has supreme control and mastery of his thrusting, erect rods, freely brandishing those rigid weapons in many an unexpected milieu as he slides them in and out of their vice-like sheaths. I say all of this to try and convey something of the untamed, impolite, and occasionally startling nature of these audio jolts – something which the label press is keen for us to savour, besides pointing out the dramatic stereo pans that are going down on this hunky beast, and noting the puzzling sleeve photos also provided by Keller (yes, I agree he is a maverick who presents every aspect of his statements with utmost care, and quite forcefully too). These images of tiles, shading into gold and with strange flakes or particles clustering in unfamiliar corners, might portray a physics experiment going horribly wrong in the lab. Or maybe a failed heist of gold bullion, since anti-theft techniques are growing more advanced in the crime-stricken regions of certain American states.
As for the title Sleep Room, it’s fair to say this album does for the bedroom what the movie Panic Room did for leather-bound sofas and plastic wallets. Tune in now to enjoy the juice from this maverick electrician; play it alongside the Scott Walker song of the same name, and soon you too will learn the true meaning of “oh you mambos!” (03/06/2024)