Will Gresson — Venedig

Will Gresson's very first release, "Venedig", came out in 2010 on DIY avant-garde/noise label Small Doses, who have released Locrian and Richard Ramirez among others.  To my surprise, the music on this disk is quite subdued, and closer to minimalist sound sculpture than anything else I've heard from this label, drawing clear influence from William Basinski, Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project and the basic waveform compositions found on the Raster-Noton label.

Gresson employs a grainy palette of metallic synthetic long tones, liberally applying DSP.  His music exists with one foot in silence, in a cold but pleasantly rounded haze.  He sometimes nears the weathered, tape looped orchestral soup of many of the most haunting Gas tracks, but somehow leaves the sound eerily thin, somehow sterilized and missing harmonics, and rather than the bliss of Gas there is a melancholic flavor.  Like Basinski, the music sounds distant played at any volume, but here a certain digital sharpness of timbre contrasts the warm, unintrusive beauty of Basinski's music, and may cause many listeners displeasure at even moderate volumes.

But so wreathed in digital bit degradation artifacts, the flickering harmonic shifting of a feedback ostinato remains capable of imparting emotion, and images of human life.  The title alone of the first piece on the album, "Learning to Sleep In An Adult World" evokes a process that is for many a struggle, with powerful emotional ties to multitudes of half-remembered nocturnal hours spent in solitude.  The song itself is an entry in the lovely subgenre of somnolent ("sleep aid") ambient music, mimicing the slow pace and overall quietude of the hours wherein most living things are in slumber.

Several tracks, like "Venice 6", approach slowly over several minutes.  As they oscillate calmly in the distance, the listener is aware of the quietude of the listening space and the resulting sensation is quite peaceful.  Elsewhere, such as in the final minutes of "Venice 5", there are crescendoes into pointillistic digital noise as per Ryoji Ikeda, the sound of raw data and test patterns, which can be said to have a profound physical effect on the listener, effectively scrambling and disrupting thoughts and emotions into immersive neutrality.

"Venedig" is an interesting album, but clearly not for everyone.  It requires a great deal of patience to listen to, not to mention an appreciation for angular digital glitches.  Noise hounds looking for their next Small Doses fix best look elsewhere.  I personally enjoyed hearing the ideas of loop-based minimalists applied to this stark, unforgiving palette, but missed the sonic fullness of Gresson's influences as well, and hope he'll explore different sonic territory in the future