: foundry indices : reviews : sounds : : : news : pictures : words : : : the foundry : hypnos REVIEWS from Igloo Magazine (10.27.06) http://igloomag.com/ written by Mark Teppo, Contributing Editor M. Bentley :: This World (The Foundry, CD) "...Both suites seek to invoke in the listener a sonic space outside of their normal range: whether it be the expansive infinity to be found in the daily cycle of our lives with Chronos & Kairos or the multi-pathed possibilities of our surrounding that make up the body of Import. In both cases, Bentley succeeds admirably..." This World is a collection of two longer pieces by M. Bentley, owner and architect of The Foundry label. Chronos & Kairos are an examination of the passage and impact of time upon our bodies and rhythmic cores, while Import, originally released on the limited run Fält sublable project invalidObject, is re-released here as a thematic companion to Chronos & Kairos. Both employ Bentley's "kitchen sink" approach to ambient textures: utilizing every and any sound that he can get a recording of as textural material for the work. Chronos & Kairos opens with "Time (fabricated)," the ticking sound of a mechanical clock (do any of us remember those any more?) as the beat track for drifting tonal ambience and delicate micro-squiggles of sound. "Time (retrograde)" picks up an echo, a diastolic hiccup to the systolic click, and strange streams of ephemereal sound begin to creep into the foreground like homunculi that have become lost on the way to a Coil recording session. "Sine (of the Times)" slips into a world of undulating sine waves, their rhythmic peak and valley becoming the subtle marker of time's passage, while Bentley releases ambient washes at random intervals. In "Pavane," the rhythms are even more distant, the infrequent heartbeat of continental drift. Field recordings of jet engines and automobiles passing begin to rise in the mix, the suggestion of a larger world of sound beyond the microcosmic navel-gazing that we've been doing for the previous fifteen minutes. "Kairos (storm)" is filled with the sound of rain and thunder as the pulsating drift of sound pulls us through a circadian cycle -- day heading into night -- and we end up with "Chronos (night)," a crackling glitch track filled with the digitally augmented sound of crickets, their nighttime song turned into a microscopic rhythm pattern. The passage of time in Chronos & Kairos drifts from precisely delineated spans to more open-ended flow -- the hurried tick-tock of humanity's existence becoming the slow meander of infinity. It is no accident that Bentley references Steward Brand's book, The Clock of the Long Now, for his definitions of Chronos and Kairos. The suite is an ambient expansion of sound, suggesting to the listener a mental state beyond their petty, brutish lifetime; Bentley wants us to think beyond the next heartbeat, the next breath, the next weekend excursion. In Chronos & Kairos, our lives are the small digital noises -- those tiny squirts of sound that intrude upon the glacial cosmic drift. Import was written for Fält's invalidObject project, a series of fifteen minute releases all titled after the twenty-four reserved words in Javascript. Bentley's Import is a fifteen part experimental symphony that begins with field recordings of water and the shore, dissolves into twisting ambient tones, shifts into strident alerts and digitized waterfalls, decays into ambient feedback rhythms, loops into surreal tone poems, and departs in a haze of granular arrhythmia. Of course, you can create your own path through the fifteen tracks -- that is the beauty of the arrangement. More abrasive and abrupt in its transitions than Chronos & Kairos, Import leaves the listener with a sensation of sampling: both having been and partaking of. Both suites seek to invoke in the listener a sonic space outside of their normal range: whether it be the expansive infinity to be found in the daily cycle of our lives with Chronos & Kairos or the multi-pathed possibilities of our surrounding that make up the body of Import. In both cases, Bentley succeeds admirably. http://igloomag.com/doc.php?task=view&id=1401&category=reviews