Apophenia is a seven-track album from Tarab- aka Australian sound artist Eamon Sprod. The release highlights Sprod’s ear for selecting interesting sounds and then arranging/composing them in a largely rewarding, clever, and at points unpredictable manner

The release appeared in March of last year, as either a CD or digital download- I’m reviewing the CD version of the release. The disc comes presented in a thin gatefold- on its outside it’s a monochrome affair, taking in a front cover picture featuring what looks like toy gun caps and a cut piece of tape. Inside we get two coloured pictures- one of what looks like a tangled pile of thick black cables, and  a ripped fabric-covered fence with a tire and some other half-seen stuff behind.

All the tracks here are untitled, with each having runtimes between four and eleven minutes. The open track finds Sprod starting off fairly pared back, and almost ANW/ textured noise like with a blend of gentle grain pull and flicking texturing. As we move on through the seven-minute track he adds in more circling/ dragging grainy tones, and jittering ‘n’ snapping tones. He keeps pettering back the textures before once more become fairly detailed/ busy in their blending. Around the 4th minute, he adds in an oppressive drone-like element, which he keeps cutting in & out- along with shifts into more awkward and wonky wheel churn that at points has an almost distant gull call like quality.

Track three opens with a wonderful oppressive and stark neon tube-like machine buzz, then sudden cuts back to a more distant tone whistle, before shifting into sudden thick drone sustains, knock wind blow junk sounds with the backdrop of road rushing. With Sprod cuts feeling both jarring, yet oddly organic too.  There’s track five with its shift from sudden on/off dragging beads tone,  jarring rough concert floor drag and machine shop drone, and blend of tight jittering junk-meets-poping aquatic bead.

The seventh and final track is the longest here at just under twelve minutes- it moves from mixes of distant wind sounds and weird waving sub-bass hoover, onto near aboded factory floor drags and shifts, and sudden jittering junk scrapes/ forks. All making for a decidedly low-key yet cryptic end to the release.

Apophenia is once again a decidedly unpredictable, but largely rewarding journey into textured sound art and sparse junk composition from Mr Sprod. To pick up a copy of the CD direct head over to here.