Dave Smolen — Feedlines

Feedlines is a CD-R conisisting of five pieces, all designated only by their track numbers, with blank tracks in between some of the pieces. The purpose of the blank spaces are noted as "silence to discourage continuous listening". This self explanatory comment tells us we are supposed to take each of these (to simplify we'll call them "suites") as their own entity. This pratice is not all that uncommon in the field of improv music or, in fact, lot of music that fits into the "what the fuck?" category of instrumental music.

The music consists of sounds made with computers. percussion, and a bunch of effects. Smolen also gets help from additional musicians Andy Hayleck, Paul Neidhart and John Heron on two tracks.

Though these pieces are improvised, the first track sounds almost like an electro-acoustic composition. There are analog sounding high pitched whines, then percussion which is bathed in reverb and delay. The primitive electronics are somewhat reminiscent of Kontakte era Stockhausen in that they are fairly disjointed. Track 2, which completes the first suite, starts off with manipulated birdsong, and becomes more active than the first track, with what sounds like oscillators phasing up and down in the mix.

The second suite (track 4), is a wavering, flanged drone piece, with clinking low-key percussion interspersed. Its subtle tinkering gives it a bit of depth. After the second silent track, 6 starts off with a busy, raindrop random sound, possibly sourced from glass percussion of some sort, or at any rate unusual instruments, which are then modified, most likely via computer. The 12 minute-plus piece slows down after a couple minutes, tinkers around for a while, then spazzes out a bit near its conclusion.

8 is a 19 minute-plus piece which starts from near silence, fades into some birdsong (again), and slowly fades in some of the ubiquitous whining electronics, then heads into lower case territory, where it fades to near inaudibility for a few minutes. The track includes contributions from "friction" percussion Paul Neihardt and computer contributions from Andy Hayleck. It's pretty minimal, and also kind of episodic.

The last track (10), is by far the most active, noisy track. It features moments of clattery percussion of all stripes, bells, clanking, rustling and tons of reverb. Drummer/percussionist John Heron helps to generate a pretty decent racket over the course of 19 minutes, then it ends with applause (aparently it was recorded live).

Dave Smolen is just emerging as an artist, and it's somewhat evident over the course of this collection. On the negative side, these pieces sound a bit dry and undeveloped. Therefore, the music isn't all that involving at times. On the plus side, Smolen is clearly doing his own thing here, and that's always commendable. Feedlines certainly isn't horrendous by any means, and with persistence, even better things may indeed be on the horizon.