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from Grooves Magazine #9 (11/2002)
written by Greg Clow
http://www.groovesmag.com
LABEL SPOTLIGHT: THE FOUNDRY
The Foundry is a label based in Berkley, California that specializes primarily in various flavors of ambient music. An extension of an imprint created in 1985 by musician and writer Michael Bentley to publish his chapbooks, the label was launched in 1997 primarily to release Bentley's own work under such names as eM, Rhomb (a collaboration with Nathan Kreisberg) and The Apiary. In 2001, a distribution deal was struck with like-minded label Hypnos which allowed Bentley to broaden the focus of The Foundry to encompass the work of other artists as well. Reviewed below are the 7 albums that have been released so far via the Foundry/Hypnos partnership.
Various - Lost And Found: A Foundry Anthology
This double CD provides a perfect introduction to The Foundry and its aural philosophy. Disc one - a.k.a. Lost - features a sampling of material from the label's earliest half-dozen releases, and all of the are by label head Michael Bentley or one of his pseudonyms or partnerships. Most of the tracks on Lost are of the deep and immersive ambient variety (aside from M. Bentley's "Flora", which matches some clicky glitches with a pretty acoustic guitar melody), and despite coming from various original sources, they are sequenced into a nice cohesive collection. As for Found, it serves as a sampler for most of the releases reviewed below, so read on for more information...
Seofon - Zero Point
Part remix album, part collaborative release, and part compilation, Zero Point features San Francisco's Seofon digging through the back-catalogue of sibling trance-ambient projects Ambient Temple Of Imagination and Mystery School (both of which he is a member) and reworking the material with the help of an all-star cast of electronic musicians that includes Vidna Obmana, Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Stephen Kent, Not Breathing and Thermal. While each of the eight tracks is credited specifically to one or more of the participating artists, the entire set has been seamlessly linked by Seofon, resulting in a 70 minute journey that ebbs and flows from classic Eno-style ambience to more beat-driven and ethno-flavored soundscapes.
Dean Santomieri - The Boy Beneath The Sea
While I'm not a firm believer in the adage that ambient music is meant purely for background listening, I do find that many good examples of the genre serve well as a backdrop to activities where the mind is occupied and the sound should be unobtrusive. This disc, however, does not serve that purpose as it is primarily a spoken word album, and a somewhat haunting one at that. Santomieri is both a musician and author, and this album finds him presenting a reading of a story about a boy named Sean who drowns, or goes to live under the sea, or perhaps both. The music as performed by Bruce Anderson (chromatone guitar), Karen Stackpole (percussion) and David Kwan (electronics) is suitably watery and immersive. It's a highly original release that demands dedicated listening in the right frame of mind.
eM - All The Stars Burning Bright
Foundry founder Michael Bentley steps into the spotlight for this release under his eM moniker. The album is described on the label's website as "an exploration of the universe through sound", and amongst the source material used in the record's production were NASA recordings of various space phenomena. The resulting tracks are swirling miasma of sound, sounding less like music (at least in the traditional sense of the word) and more like signals from some distant interstellar outpost filtered through our atmosphere of terrestrial transmissions and other interference. A deeply engrossing and truly spacey disc.
Mollusk - Accretions
Malcolm Bly originally created Mollusk as a venue for his experiments in digital sound files, playing with bit rates and compression to produce small, lo-fi files that are strongly affected by the MP3 encoding process. It may therefore seem strange to release such media-dependent material on the CD format, but Bly took the opportunity to rework most of the pieces to take advantage of the higher quality format, and in most cases the work is better for it. Especially benefiting from the higher fidelity is "Evolution of the Snail's Brain", the album's 6 part centerpiece that features a wide sound spectrum ranging from barely audible low frequency pulses to piercing high pitched tones to sub-aquatic pingings that are true to the project's name.
Various - 360°: A Foundry Project
Unlike the earlier Lost & Found anthology, 360° is more than just a label sampler. As suggested by it's subtitle, there is a cohesive concept at work here: Bentley provided each artist with a short excerpt from a fragment of a story that he wrote, and each of them replied with a track intended to be related to their excerpt. Contributors range from members of the Foundry roster like eM, Rhomb and Jonathan Hughes to guests such as Kim Cascone, High Skies (a.k.a. Mat Jarvis, the man behind several classic albums under the name Gas on the late and lamented Emit label) and Mark Van Hoen & Seofon. The latter duo provide one of the highlights of the album with "Shrine", a brilliant combination of fragmented voices and static-ridden pulses. The style varies from track to track, but they're tied together by a series of "interpolations", short interludes by eM that perfectly bridge the gaps and help establish a consistent theme for the collection.
Jonathan Hughes - Trillium
For his first release under his own name (previous efforts being offered under the Subspace pseudonym), Buffalo resident Jonathan Hughes - not to be confused with Chicago's John Hughes of Hefty Records fame - makes the interesting choice of working exclusively with rhythms in 3/4 time. Not to suggest that there are a load of heavy beats on Trillium, as the enveloping ambience that The Foundry label is known for is definitely the album's primary focus. But there is a nice rhythmic undercurrent to much of the material, and the final track surprises with throbbing pulses, glitchy static, rolling breakbeats and an almost bluesy guitar melody.
Those interested in exploring the releases above or any other Foundry offerings should visit the label's excellent website at www.foundrysite.com where you can find an extensive archive of information about all of their releases including exclusive MP3 bonus tracks, supplemental info "booklets" in PDF format and much more.