Magali Babin | Chemin de Fer
No Type | CD
No Type are probably best known for their quality back catalog of (free) MP3/GIF offerings at http://www.notype.com which are, without exception, worth downloading in their entirety. Their welcome move into hardware territory has resulted in a number of releases since 2001's excellent 2CD 'The Freest of Radicals'.
Magali Babin's 'Chemin de Fer' features a collection of digitally massaged textures - simple, yet seductive the crisp recordings feature the magnified sounds of everyday objects placed within spacious soundfields.
Opening with the breathy textures of 'Triturations', Babin sets the scene perfectly for a series of pristine studies, each one mesmerising. 'Petit Jardin' features five magnified minutes of razor sharp textures which throb and sparkle, pulsing through repeated patterns. 'La corde' - the sound of a cord pulled taut before sounds are wrenched from it - is childlike in its simplicity, but anything but simplistic.
The very ordinariness of the sounds Babin favours mask a delicate ear and deft touch: 'Monsieur et Madame Watt' glistens with high frequency electricity underpinned by low frequency murmur; while 'E' resonates like a digital gamelan. It's perhaps best to close with No Type's own, apt, 'file under' categorisation of Babin's work:
File under: microsonic poetry.
[CM]
