Scanner, Scanner & Gareth Davis – Ambientblog
SCANNER – FORCES, REACTIONS, DEFLECTIONS
Robin ‘Scanner‘ Rimbaud is one of the veterans of the ambient/electronic scene. With almost 100 album releases to his name, and collaborations with artists like Michael Nyman, Laurie Anderson, and Pauline Oliveiros (to name only a few), I can safely assume he needs no further introduction.
For his new album Forces, Reactions, Deflections, released on the Quiet Details label, he avoided the use of synthesizers, but recorded the ”resonant clangs, echoes, and whispers of a stainless steel staircase at home”, úsing a geophone seismic microphone ‘and the gentle assistance of the occasional resonant filter and sample software’, thus ‘transforming everyday architecture into an unexpected orchestra’.
I cannot claim to be familiar with all of Scanner‘s work, but the soundscapes on this album are probably among his deepest, and sometimes also darkest, work.
Ambient, Musique Concrete, Acousmatic, Electro-Acoustic … it’s all of that.
It definitely takes a highly creative mind to transform found sounds from your everyday environment into music like this, where “highly textured drones meet distance pulses; metallic fragments merge with hauntingly evocative melody.”
Forces, Reactions, Deflections is the 40th album release on the Quiet Details label, the label that started in 2023 and has established itself as one of the most important labels for ambient music (or: for music with ‘quiet details’).
Released as a CD (with an artwork fine print) and as a digital download.
GARETH DAVIS & SCANNER – SONGLINES
Within two months after the release of Forces, Reactions, Deflections, another Scanner album sees the light of day. The Dutch Moving Furniture label releases Songlines – Rimbaud’s collaboration with bass clarinettist Gareth Davis.
The sound on the two (18-minute) tracks, called ‘Structure Of Statements’ and ‘Figurative Language’, is somewhat lighter (in the sense of ‘less heavy’) than that on Forces …
The duo takes their time to develop the tracks, combining drones with loops, creating ‘an album where circuitry hums, wood vibrates, and the air between the notes crackles with possibility’.
Gareth Davis way of playing his bass clarinet is usually easily recognisable, so it surprised me that that specific, very personal sound seems absent in these recordings, ór it is buried very deep in the mix. Davis is also credited for effects, so maybe his clarinet parts are heavily treated and altered to merge into Scanner‘s electronic textures. The same applies to the clarinet played by Monika Bugajny, who joins the duo in this recording: it’s there, somewhere, but hard to distinguish.
“Think late-night conversations in abandoned buildings. Think fog rolling over neon. Think sound that slips through your fingers even as it takes hold of you.”
Songlines is available on vinyl and digital. Official release date is November 21, but the album can already be pre-ordered.
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