Impossible Shapes (A Brief Retrospective 1982-2002) [Digipak]

This compilation of six pieces spans the early '80s to the early 2000s, just one of them previously issued before this 2004 release (and the track "Electric Interlude" only appeared on the obscure CD DISContact!, issued by the Canadian Electroacoustic Community label). It's often experimental composition more suitable for downbeat, foggy, and slightly sinister environmental ambience than casual listening. Yet it's certainly eclectic, to the point where no two tracks sound too alike or similar in approach, giving it a leg up on many similar avant-garde recordings of the sort. "Tale of the Brocken Specter" [sic], for instance, has the kind of desolate reverberating, overlapping electronics characteristic of the darkest sounds you hear on electronic specialist radio programs, descending into near-hellish ambient storm clouds of sound on "Not Yet Broken." Yet "Endgame," written for Morton Feldman, unveils far different delicate pealing tones, and though "Half Arcane" starts like it's going to be another murky Surround Sound track (indeed, it's subtitled "Netherworld Soundscape"), it gives way to unsettling choppy pulses and razor buzzes. There is, incidentally, an unlisted seventh and final track consisting of five and a half minutes of repeated rustling wind-like noise, which loops over and over as if it's the runout groove of a vinyl record where the turntable needle doesn't automatically lift off the grooves. ~ Richie Unterberger