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█ █ P U B L I C . S O U N D
█ █
█ █ presenting our latest release
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r e l e a s e . i n f o
Artist.....: naw
Title......: City Saturate
Rip Date...: Mar 2008 Cat.No.....: noiscd863
Style......: Electronic Label......: Noise Factory
Quality....: VBRkbps Type.......: Album
Size.......: 99,5 MB Source.....: CDDA
r e l e a s e . n o t e s
The follow-up to Neil Wiernik's memorable Green Nights, Orange
Days release from 2004 opens with "Harbourline Rendered", an oily
iridescent spectrum of sustained notes floating across its
surface. It's a contrasting mood to the standout track "5am West
Bound" a set of well placed clicks and clear-cut beats that is
neatly echoed in Tomas Jirku's "As West As It Gets" closing remix.
In between Wiernik works his way systematically through a set of
ringing metallic mediations on a single theme, clustered
principally around the three part "City Saturate" series at the
album's center. Looped and reworked into different speeds and
rhythms, it demonstrates how a conceptually minimalist approach
doesn't automatically mean less. - Ken Hollings
The felicitously dubbed echo chamber, and its more sophisticate
successors, has surely proved electronic musics most enduring
technology. As once characterized by David Toop, it serves
variously as landscape paintbox, time stretcher, resonance
amplifier, and warp factor. Toronto-based Neil Wiernik has clearly
spent lengthy spells of his decade in electronic music in his
chambers, so to speak, for his NAW project is shamelessly
echo-steeped ambient-dub-techno, virtually auto-referencing Basic
Channels similarly inclined explorations, and seemingly rejoicing
in its tradition. That said, City Saturate has a more reflective
downtempo orientation, giving more space for articulation of
Wierniks professed interest in sound-environment linkages. The
Vorsprung Durch Techno of Von Oswald & Ernestuss vehicle had
something of the precision-tooled chug of Kraftwerks autobahn, but
Wierniks customization, though similarly engineered, with those
BC/CR trademark metallic recursive synth-stabs, has more the feel
of an updated blues of backwoods urban postmodern; a deep-chorded
minor key anhedonia, with bass bumps and kicks coming and going to
spring things into languid motion.
In this respect, it surpasses the more generic minimal house of
2004s Green Nights Orange Days, being less bound by beat-template,
freed for a more thorough archaeology of timbre. In mood its an
in-between music for the ambivalent transition of dusk-night or
dawn-morn. The cover art aerial photograph of a cityscape proves
to be an imagist representation of NAW sound: like the BC
colour-box, City Saturate has a deliberately restricted sound
palette with similar sounds and themes running through a number of
the tracks inter-referentially, eventually creating a koan-like
almost meditative aural space. Its mastered fully by ex-MP
tweak-worker Twerk, who manages to keep the resolution of its
delay-infused sonic contours free from mud and gloop. Tomas Jirku
provides a 12-minute dance-spin on 5 AM West Bound, which serves
to throw the rest of the album into a twilit relief, as deeper,
more delicate. - Alan Lockett
Toronto electronic composer and self-described audio contortionist
Neil Wiernik has long been interested in sound ecology,
landscapes, and environments. However, while his last two discs
Green Nights Orange Days and The Resound of a Foggy Autumn Dawn
celebrated the simple unfettered joys of escaping it in the great
outdoors with tracks like Penny Fishing North of Bay, Mid Winter
Sailboat Ride, and Campfire Cricket Melodies, on City Saturate,
Wiernik switches from the rural to the urban, turning his
attention to one of the most dreaded tasks of any working adult:
the daily commute along a major highway.
City Saturate is an audio chronicle of a daily commute over a 12
hour period, from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. As anyone who has made a
back-and-forth trek along our increasingly clogged thoroughfares
knows, a suitable soundtrack to deal with the always potential
road rage would be perhaps a mixed CD of Merzbow, Atari Teenage
Riot, some speed metal, and some gabba. That said, Wiernik begins
City Saturate on a more optimistic note. The luminescent and
glowing ambience of Harbourline Rendered encapsulates the hope and
buoyancy that comes with an early morning sunrise and the prospect
of a fresh start. Just as with his previous albums as Naw, Wiernik
sticks to the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction, humid
dub-house/minimal-techno template that has served him so well. So
5 A.M. West Bound is driven by a 4/4 groove, skittering
percussion, garbled, clashing radio-like voices, and panning, ping
ponging Fender Rhodes pulses. Judging from 5 A.M., Wiernik appears
to have taken a page from the calm and serenity of Kraftwerks
landmark album Autobahn.
However, once in the city, as on Sunstained Viaduct Passages, the
sleek ride hits some bumps, as the claustrophobic density of urban
sprawl takes over, with the sounds becoming grittier, grainer, and
murkier, the tempo ever slower, the keyboard melodies more
metallic. This dread continues on the title track triptych and
Elbow Landlock, as the beats, clicks, and cuts grow more skeletal
and pointillistic, the melodies hazier and more diffuse until the
weariness and fatigue of the gridlock sets in on crawling
space-out dub of Potholes, Railroad Cracks and Sidewalk Smack and
the sheer exhaustion of the trip home on 5 P.M. East Bound. Tomas
Jirkus upbeat re-mix of 5 A.M. West Bound is the only misstep
here: Tacked on at the end, it not only seems disingenuous but
also unnecessary. That said, City Saturate perfectly captures the
existential cycle of the daily commute into the big city and the
accompanying physical and mental toll it exacts on all of us.
- Richard Moule
p l a y l i s t
01 harbourline rendered 04:16
02 5 am west bound 07:35
03 sunstained viaduct passages 07:55
04 city saturate pt. i 08:00
05 city saturate pt. ii 07:00
06 city saturate pt. iii 07:11
07 elbow landlock 04:41
08 potholes, railroad cracks and sidewalk smack 07:10
09 5 pm east bound 06:00
10 5 am west bound 12:21
(tomas jirku as west as it gets remix) ..
72:09 min
g r e e t i n g s
agw - amok - bass - bcc - bex - boss - cmg - cmc - cms - d2h
def - dh - disc0 - drum - emp - ftd - fwyh - gem - i8 - ipc
jce - jfk - jrp - just - khz - kinky - kw - lame - maem - mbs
mgc - psycz - r2r - rac - radial - rapid - rks - rtb - sb
sever - sfe - soup - sour - sq - tr - trt - ube - uc - upe
uki - xtc - yard - zi
respect to music lovers worldwide
never forget : go to the show. buy the t-shirt. order the vinyl