Sound Reasons t0

It’s hard to say whether this disc can be enjoyed conventionally. Though it has moments of allusion to pop taste, these are of the nature of mirages. Think of it more as a sonic painting, relying as much on field recordings, elements of musique concrete and the listener’s ability and willingness to ”˜compose’ the image, as on a sharp engineering and production acumen. Like the instrumental score to The Million Dollar Hotel, Sound Reasons t₀ exists primarily to tell a story. Only here, instead of the minimal, fuzzy narratives of a fictional world, we’re talking about the unpredictability of real cities which this disc captures exceedingly well. There is some indulgent ambience-building, though it mostly proves well worth the wait when we come upon voices treated to emulate something like the hypnotic twitter of strange electronic birds (”˜Cosmicomics’ by the 4th World Orchestra), minimal bleep experiments centered around car horns (”˜RL 137’ by Da Saz), glacial, stuttering, nine minute-long guitar laments (”˜Freeze’ by Back to Frank) and other islands of clarity strewn along the altogether groovier second half starting at ”˜Blue Hour’ by DiF and ending with the head-bobbing ”˜Maya Saguna’. Besides Lionel Dentan of Da Saz, Audio Pervert aka Samrat B of Teddy Boy Kill and media artist and Village Voice contributor DJ Spooky, the lineup also comprises musicians from Munich, Tokyo and Russia all mixing and matching under different names. The release is available for free streaming at www.soundreasons.in.