REVIEWS reviews...... sounds...... pictures...... words...... links...... info foundry label profile by darren bergstein publisher/editor of i/e magazine [Though i/e met an premature end to it's latest incarnation, Darren was kind enough to send me this profile he had written for the next issue to be published.] That all three initial releases from Berkeley, California's label The Foundry are packaged mysteriously in black sleeves of galactic understatement is no coincidence. Author of both The Apiary and eM discs and Foundry founder Michael Bentley has married probing, experimentalist tactics, tribal linguistics and an informed sense of modern 'classical' compositional techniques to his particularly original take on 'American' ambient music. Each disc makes use of "electronic music generation some combining acoustic sounds and instruments, others purely synthetic." Says labelhead and co-ordinator Michael Bentley in the parchment paper manifesto that accompanies the three following recordings, musicians who record for The Foundry "have been influenced by a wide range of artists and musical traditions. Our goal is to present, in turn, a variety of musical ventures. What ties them together is a certain aesthetic, and a commitment to quality and artistic vitality. If we can imagine it, we can do it, and we want to communicate this energy to those listeners who wish to imbibe of the spirits." Imbibing in spirits and their essence is a poetically accurate means with which to describe the tribalistic motifs from one of Bentley's projects, The Apiary. On Descent, he summons any number of ghostly Indian rites, looking on as tribesmen await the coming of entities that dwarf themselves. As an insistent drum pattern anchors the rustic chimes, wooden flutes and yawning electronics of "Duot," one is seemingly left alone in peaceful yet potentially frightening zones. Bentley is obviously enamored of his contemporaries (Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana), as a sense of entropic collapse finds their kindred spirit in "Recalling the Other's" hallowed-out chasms. Disarming music that draws upon vast amounts of mystic allegory to realize some degree of molten power, Descent can leave you stranded in the void with little in the way of rescue (except by the morose strings and mechanistic whirrs of "Repeat"), but your time spent there still leaves indelible marks. On the appropriately titled Djinn ('spirit'), recorded under Bentley's other nom de plume eM, there are references made to the oblique strategies of Ryoji Ikeda, Ø, Panasonic, Disinformation and the Sähko artists, all of whose careers are built on the same sort of 'difficult listening' and uniquely mechanized approach to electronics and synthesized sound applications. Bentley makes use of such disparate sound sources as test recordings, static charges and signal processing (on the oddly-popping and peculiarly Oval-esque "The Haze in Tropojope's Caffé"), 'TV signal-driven synthesis and processing' (the unsettling ambience of "If On A Winter's Night"), and simple feedback signals and static charges, resulting in all sorts of phantasms erupting out of his machines during the haunting conceptualization of a "Temple Ghost Simoom." As a masterful sound painter and sculptor, Bentley's exhibits the artists' keen eye for placement, drama and effect, and these brilliantly executed sonic creations, realized with minimal component parts, again demonstrate that all the equipment in the world does not a master make. Bentley's assertion is that his ergonomic djinns arise from "two kilowatts (who) spark across a screwdriver blade and hot metal rains down on boxes and skin. I know them to be of mixed motive...I conjure their presence for you, and I am changed for having done so." We are, too. Of The Foundry's representative compilation Eclectronica, Bentley describes the varied tonal shadings as "anthology of movement between the classical and the ambient." His own "Armand-A Theme for The Majestic" might be Schubert calling Dead Can Dance to arms, operatic flourishes set to a strident beat. The desperately short eM track, "Fanfare From" is the audio commentary of a transistor screaming its last dying breath, while The Apiary's "Dreams of Ragnarok and Sisyphus" is a portentous aria intended to stir dormant gods, as breaths held half in static and great veils of mist are parted by gaping digital strings and dusky synths. It perhaps epitomizes the strange juxtaposition of the senses Eclectronica seeks to attain-the blending of sweeping grandeur with noiseform electronics-and as good as it is, the lengths of the eM and Apiary records make for more wholly satisfying experiences. Imminent in The Foundry's series of uncategorizable releases is a disc by Rhomb, and additional forays into the wires from eM and The Apiary. Bentley perfectly sums up the thrust of The Foundry's agenda (and, for that matter, of much of today's progressive electronica proponents) when he proclaims that "the interaction between human musician and nonhuman signal is lively and synchronistic."