Alex Durlak — Catalyst

This is a very odd 3" CDr by Toronto sound artist and print company head Alex Durlak.  This is supposedly his first recording after a long hiatus from "the tail end of a bleak winter" and it does sound quite dark and foreboding.

According to the liner notes, "his guitar playing is sampled and processed in real time using a series of granular synthesis patches to create densly layered and dark sounds not easily associated with their original source."  I.e., he must've been trying to do with the guitar like Chrome did on their Read Only Memory mini-album.  I can pick out some guitar, which sounds like it's being fed through a faulty tremolo pedal, but there's definitely as much electronics as guitar here.

Mysteriously three-quarters into this release the music cuts out with a minute of silence and then the strangulated guitar comes back.  In all a very unusual piece I don't know how to describe at all -- parts of it are pure processed guitar, other moments are ambient in an Eno stylee.

Of course what's most interesting is the title.  To be a 'catalyst' means you can somehow transform another human being into a different state.  If this piece is a catalyst I don't know how it would work or what it would transform the listener into.

In the end a very strange and intriguing piece by Alex Durlak.  If he decides to make more music I'm curious as to what he'll come up with next.