Sci Hi - Lab Recordings

Sci Hi is the latest pseudonym for New Zealand’s Paul Winstanley, who first came to attention in the mid-1990’s with a series of CD (as Paul H Locasta or Paul Giilford) on the Tempo Kannan Bail label that were eye-crossing explorations for bass and frazzled electronics. He also released the staggering ‘Water Regions of the Southwest USA’ album under the name Artificial Subterrane via Charalambides’ Wholly Other imprint, and collaborated with texan trombonist Dave Dove in The Dave Dove Paul Duo. Now back in his homeland after his mid 90s relocation to Houston, Texas, Winstanley’s approach to electronics is as singular as ever. Lab Recordings is constructed entirely from sounds generated by electronic feedback. This beautifully packaged lath 7” and full length CDr folds impatient peals and deep. Thrumming blurts of noise into abstract arrangements that are almost acedemic in approach – though this stuff sits just as comfortably in home recording environs as it would in an electronic music department. At times Lab Recordings references the wild storm and splutter of his earlier recordings, and for anyone lucky enough to have had their circuits fried by Winstanley/Locatsta’s 1995 album Heaven on Earth, Lab Recordings will partly feel like an extension of previous form. But his approach is now more refined, each volley of miniscule trills or wave of low-end hum positioned with almost surgical accuracy. Feedback represents the bruising of electronic systems, but Winstanleys careful organisation of willed malfunction does nothing less than bruise the air itself.”
THE WIRE, 2006 

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