Soft Generator – acknowledge

Soft Generator a collaboration between David Newman (Autistici) and Erik Schoster (He Can Jog). Is a Soft Generator a Soft Machine? Judging by the beautifully blossoming splatterpulse of the opening “Ack”, with its filters peeking (and peaking) over a rainbow-hued, synthetic horizon, such a generator of pillowy delight would no doubt do William Burroughs proud. The sounds percolating herein do in fact make for machines of loving grace, the effect startling enough but strangely soothing, circuits doing penance to both themselves and the worshipping listener. Midway through “Ack”, you’re taken on a tour of (post)-Namlook-like reverie, where temporal tides shift and your mind seems to literally bisect outer space; space-time folds as blips, phizzes, and squirts arc upon a very Inoue-esque soundstage, augmented by faux-dub echo that shimmers throughout and descends back to earth like steel rain. “Know” brings home the beats and sequencer surge with as fine a pedigree as some newly-minted Tangerine Dream b-side, while “Owl” channels Delia Derbyshire and the INA-GRM crew thanks to some ingeniously-coined synthetic flutters and weirdly oxygenated chills and frills. The closing “Ledge” suggests the listener looks down into the electronic abyss, but what stares back isn’t simply dark drones and omniscient tones; rather, there’s a stately classical air that posits Ryuichi Sakamoto and Max Richter jamming in an elevator with Johann Johannsen. Funky fugue states, done with considerable aplomb, compositional vigor, and no small amount of atmospheric delight.

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