g*park: sub

The most enigmatic of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe, Marc Zeier is the man behind G*Park; and here, he presents his first major album since the acclaimed 2008 album of cryptic electro-acoustics entitled Reuters. Many years in the making, Sub is a sprawling masterpiece of modern day musique concrete, reflecting the early pioneers' use of razor cut tape with a grandiose revelation of an existential horror. Zeier describes this album as the manifestation of amorphous conditions that lead to (or interfere with) representational forms or states of being. His examples of the shifting patterns from clouds of blackbirds or the clinging masses from algae blooms are rudimentary entry points for his rhizomatic, chimerical work. For every malignant drone and turgid thrumming, Zeier will puncture his fluttering, frozen methane surfaces with jagged incisions, pneumatic hammerings, and decompressed gasps. This fragmented punctuation is a signature to the G*Park aesthetic, used highly effectively in mapping his clinical situations turned septic. The titles to the tracks on Sub address the physical attributes of the source material that went into each track, with some decidedly specific ('Swine,' 'Wasp,' 'Stone') and others nebulously abstract ('Purge,' 'Glow,' 'Pulse'). For Zeier, the exact nature of the sound object is informed more by a shadowy deconstruction than by a direct representation, thrust into an absurd existence as an abomination, a violation, a monster. Sub locates itself near the psychological minefields of Luc Ferrari, Steven Stapleton's prediliction for windows, and the cruel x-ray visions from fellow Swiss aktionists Sudden Infant and Dave Phillips