Tod Dockstader / David Lee Myers — Bijou

Tod Dockstader is one of early electronic music’s pioneers, creator of seminal 60s works like Eight electronic pieces and Quartermass he is regarded as one of American electronic music’s founding fathers. Here he teams up with feedback composer David Lee Myers for the second time after their frog and marsh sound manipulation project Pond.

Bijou is a far more wide ranging work than Pond being that is composed of fragments and manipulations of film soundtracks from through the ages. This grants the two men a vast library of atmosphere and textures from which to select from.
There are twenty seven tracks in total all bleeding into one another to create a full albums worth of narrative. The first dozen tracks are all in a very dark vein, mostly a mixture of atmospheres and obscure sound effects that build a sense of dread. There are recognisable fragments of well know film scores like Jaws and In the Houses contribution to the 28 Days later soundtrack but for the most part the sources for the snippets remain anonymous. I get the impression, certainly by the mood of many of the tracks that much of material has been culled from horror films (which should please a certain member of the MM writing staff) Ghostly voices, footsteps and distant environmental sounds come thick and fast with the scenes changing at an alarming rate. A phone rings, a car starts before a wave of static brings in strings and clattering distant crowd noise. It’s all very vivid and evocative, and also very smooth in it’s transitions from place to place. Stand outs of this first dozen tracks for me being the moody Illegible Proposal, Dementia and the freak out animal sound filled Air one/Recovery.

The two composers make sparing use of dramatic electronic effects so to preserve the natural sounds of the film scores and to give the album a very organic and unprocessed sound. This all changes after the first dozen pieces however when the concrete and electronic sounds take a greater role, Dockstader’s trademark blips and shuffles sitting along side more environmental sounds and the occasional feedback driven element from Lee Myers. The cringing unknown and Phoning home sound like some awful massacre is taking place with the sounds of beasts and screaming people mixed with jump-cut pieces from the Alien 3 score and ringing telephones.

The last seven or eight tracks are far more like the work of David Lee Myers. Feedback driven electronic pieces that layer textured digital sound on top of each other in a way that brings to mind the Menge series by Asmus Tietchens. Fluttering masses of dissonance like Abstraction Unchained and Abstraction Unchained Directors cut are to my ears far less immediate than the collages of mood and atmosphere of the first twelve tracks.
Myers work has many aspects to admire and at times he is able to produces tones and masses of sound that are startling beautiful but these sections are sparse through the last few tracks and the atmosphere remains mostly in the realm of distanced postmodernism. That being said Machine Mystique and Battle Finale have the feel of an overdriven tussle between Aphex Twin and Autechre.
The album ends as it beings with the sound of a reel of film spinning endlessly as the moving pictures flow by.