Szely — Processing Other Perspectives

Peter Szely is a composer who has done everything from sound installations to sound for public spaces, and, of course standard recordings, such as Processing Other Perspectives. As the title of this latest album indicates, it's a collection of sounds from Szely's friends, which he works into his unique electronica. His cohorts include Thilge's Nik Hummer, "music activist" Wolfgang Kopper,Bernhard Loibner,Martin Siewert, Ulrich Troyer and singer/performer Melita Jurisic.

The album is divided into eight themes, rather than songs, and it's intended to be structured to meet individual tastes, according to the Mosz Records website. The music is smooth and impeccably produced, and Szely's architectural approach to composition shows through in spades. The room filling arrangements present fresh angles depending on the listener's position in relation to the speakers. As a result, there are new sounds to be explored with each successive listen. Sometimes outstanding production technique provides a mask to disguise mediocre compositions, but that's not the case here. Despite the obvious challenge of trying to create music based around outsider's contributions, Szely manages to not only incorporate each contribution craftily, but he unifies the disparate elements. This is partly because he is a talented multi-instrumentalist himself. He adds his own touches to the guitar contributions by adding offsetting e-bow and keyboards. The backing drone elements and on again, off again beats are consistently interesting.

Each of the outside contributions blends nicely into the mix, but Szely doesn't obscure the sounds of the contributors. The use of the real drum tracks on the first theme are particularly striking. The aforementioned e-bow guitar tracks are smooth and ambient, yet never boring. The vocal tracks are interesting as well. The first track features Nina Erber, and it's one of the more straight-forward, somewhat techno-oriented tracks on the album. The second vocal track features Melita Jurisic, and it's the most out-of-character track on the album. Jurisic delivers a breathy impassioned performance, which increases in intensity over the course of around thirteen minutes, then the twenty minute plus track drops off to complete silence for a couple minutes, before returning with a jarring instrumental coda. While Jurisic's enthusiasm is laudable, and might work in a different context, and though Szely artfully accompanies the piece, it conflicts with the flow of the previous tracks. It's a minor stumbling block though, considering the quality of the rest of the album.