Kevin Tomkins — Square Pegs for Round Holes
Disk one takes in 30 smaller tracks that run between a few minutes to just over seven mintues a picec and total just over 70 minutes playtime. There's a real selection of different types of composition on offer we go from the opening track crumbeat withit's glighty and atmospheric tapestry of electronics, violin and piano textures. To strange, un-nevering and creepy air of I cant Sleep with it’s colllarge of baby sounds, vocal chatter and strings swoon. The edgy minimalist electronic beat pitter-patter meets eerier ambience of Revman, To the quirky and playful electro tone shifting of Hoop- which sounds like a gone wrong children’s party music. The track Vibes with it’s errier spaced tinkling tones that give one the feeling that something is on the edge of jumping out on you. To a collection of creative piano tracks that go from cinematic, to jerky, to improvised. Really theres some much vartion, talent and sonic understanding through out the whole of the disk.
Disk two takes in five longer works which all mainly head towards the 20 minute mark and again there’s a nice variation of sonic disciplines on display. Opening up the disk we have Abstract Deconstruction no1 which is a nice shifting canvas that starts off with brooding, playful and experimental electronic textures, then later on drum elements and less random and more harmonic cinematic elements come into play. Piano Movement no 4 takes us into a hypnotic, golden and harmonic drone texture of repeated piano textures. Two Violins and piano is more noisy territory with amped up and frying violins, though theres a rather nice drifting and lush ambient piano underbelly to it too. Violin Drone no 2 takes us into a haunting and dread filled harmonic drone expanses. And lastly we have the track Shift which returns to more noisy yet still textured waters with a dense improvised mix of guitar elements, horn honking and general instrumental chaos to make an hypnotic and chaotic track.
A very recommended double disk set that shows Tomkins talents stretching way beyond power electronics and the noise genre and showing him as a highly capable experimental artist in general, who can turn his hand to any avant grade form and make highly rewarding and consistent sonic expressions. It just such a pity this is ltd to a tinny edition of 100 as this really deservers a much larger audience.