mHz - Material Prosody [Room40 - 2023]Do it yourself and do it with others--no need for these to be mutually exclusive. And they are certainly not on mHz's (aka Mo H. Zareei) Material Prosody, which is something like the sonic version of a curated group show; that is, if the curator were also to contribute a work themselves. If this sounds confusing, it really isn't, but this album deserves a bit of unpacking, for fear that it might otherwise go unremarked. mHz built a crude 8-step sequencer (no great feat of invention there yet), which is designed to operate as much visually as programmatically, pulling the normally hidden movements of discrete sequencing technology out into real space. All of this, I am told, has to do with Zareei's affinity for Brutalist architecture, which began in the apartment complex where he grew up in his native Tehran and has continued ever since. Without being overly crude about the architectural movement, Brutalism entailed, among other things, a lot of concrete, a materialist WYSIWYG avant la lettre. Material Prosody is likewise concentrated, each of its six tracks named for a different building element – aluminium, brass, concrete, copper, steel, wood. Each work, similarly dubbed for the respective artist, employs mHz's sequencer to forge the resultant contribution. These pieces range from the direct, sampled "Copper" in Matmos to the ethereal and characteristically brilliant "Brass" by loscil. Each material is meant to contribute to an edifice of mHz's making, returning matter to the sonic, anchoring it in its most brutalist, materialist state.
Fans of mHz will enjoy this experiment (or, is it a proof?) for its continued exploration of the issues of sonic materiality. Others who follow the work of the aforementioned collaborators, might glimpse another side of their favorite acts, as I did. For more   Colin Lang
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