Autistici - Complex Tone Test

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4...according to our Brian on Fri 18 Sep, 2009.

An album by Autistici has crashed into my ears, released on CD by the Kesh label. I'm loving the haunting, atmosphere drenched opener, the melancholy keyboard conjuring up images of still horses in breezy late autumn fields. Are they sleeping? Are they depressed? Are they made from card? What kind of madness is this? Flickering, pulsing evocative electronica stuffed full of drifting, crackling wonder, wistful ambience, the occasional bit of off-kilter beatery & some alarmingly fresh processed samples (derived from a multitude of organic sources). The idea of this recording is, supposedly,that your conscious mind cannot take in all the different things happening in both ears simultaneously so it is a meant to be a more individualistic listen - each listener may select different parts of the music that they can concentrate on! To me it merely sounds like a very interesting progressive electronics collection that should appeal to both the experimental drone & ambient fraternity & appreciators of sound design bods such as Machinefabriek & Jasper TX. 'Complex Tone Test' is made of lovely stuff indeed!!!

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This is autistici's second full length following on from Volume Objects (12k). Tracks from the album focus on representing details from both the natural and manmade world. Each detail has the potential to be preserved or lost, clarified or confused. This means that any audio element, including coffee machines, cutlery, doors closing, elements from his own body become incorporated into the composition.

Complex Tone Test is autistici’s first release on KESHHHHHH and illustrates the artist’s work with a denser sound palette. Many of the tracks explore tonal development from acoustic origins such as mellotron, cello, harmonica and sine waves. The track refractory uses an image to audio-analysis of a rainbow to create tones within the digital sphere. Processing techniques focus on exploring each sound source before allowing it to decompose. Subtle distortion provides a warming influence while subtly placed psycho-acoustic techniques aim to simulate a dichotic listening experiment where the listener is presented with different sounds to the right and the left ear simultaneously. This means that the subject receives more auditory stimulus than she is able to analyze consciously. The interesting question, then, is what part of the input will be selected for conscious analysis.

Autistici has released tracks on 12k, Nexsound, Hippocamp, Kikapu, Wandering Ear and his own label Audiobulb Records

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