Rick Myers, Andy Votel, Sean Canty

Human Engineering

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT, ELECTRONIC

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Picking up where their unnervingly good 2020 Pre-Cert LP left off, Myers, Votel and Canty continue to map out abandoned architectures on this guttural sequel, matching hoarse poetry with spacious cinematic instrumental improvisations, noise bursts and concrète machinations. RIYL anything from Luc Ferrari and Jean-Claude Vannier to Kathy Acker & Nox or Andrew Liles.

Although the trio only began the Human Engineering project in 2018, they've known each other for aeons - Manchester-born, Western Mass-based Myers is Votel's longest-running cohort, even. They figured out this latest set over a six year period; the jumping off point was a performance photograph snapped in a disused municipal building in Easthampton, and Canty, Votel and Myers replied to the imagery with recordings of the space itself, amplifying Myers' spoken text thru an abandoned piano. Like its predecessor, the material was then shuttled back and forth between Easthampton and Manchester as an "audio correspondence", shaped, sculpted and degraded by the three friends. And although it's the trio's most eldritch material, there's something unusually welcoming about the quirked tonalities, dusted utterances and swirled echoes.

'Boundary Simulation' is the album's most open experiment - at least, you can hear what Myers, Canty and Votel are doing from a physical perspective. Myers' words, disturbed by mic artifacts, sibilance and tape saturation, are channeled through the strings and body of a broken piano that rattles and whirrs, obscuring any tangible sound. The project was conceived as an installation series, inspired by sculptor Dieter Roth and sound poet Katalin Ladik, and you can hear its origins here, before the trio dilate the sound further. On 'Impulse' it's tweaked and processed, complemented by slow piano phrases and meditative gongs; it's almost as if we're hearing two distinct emotional readings of the text - Myers' words gift the strings their rhythm (even though you can't hear them any more), and the additional instruments follow in a pocket universe nearby.

The metallic expressions are weighed against eddies of vinyl crackle and crumpled string twangs on the vaporous 'Limb Movement', while on the second side, the record reshapes itself again, forming eerie shapes with banjo-like prangs and sharp phrases on 'Line Inclination'. Each sound is never brushed clean, arriving in a flurry of squeaks and smacks, muddied with faint processes and grot. On the long finale 'Stimuli', we're knocked back into the same percussive locale as 'Impulse', this time led into the space by buzzing, high-pitched fanfares that are eventually swallowed by the room itself. Myers' voice is a ghostly trace at this point, sibilant shrieks and incomprehensible mumbles that just vibrate into space.

LP (Black Vinyl) (0)