Sam Prekop
(Thrill Jockey)
Austere, intellectual and far removed from Prekop's more song-oriented work with the Sea and Cake, Old Punch Card layers the hiss and click and mechanically pure tones of synthesizer into abstract, unexpectedly moving patterns. As you might expect from an album that cites Nuno Canavarro and Raymond Scott as influences, tone takes precedence over melody.
Tunefulness, in fact, is nearly accidental here, a lonely thread of synthesizer rising out of machine shed sounds near the end of "Tell Work," a series of luminously clear bell-tones hovering over static-infused "Array Wicket." "The Silhouettes" can, perhaps, be grasped most readily, its shimmering runs of computer notes allowed to glisten through only a scrim of friction. Overall, though, Prekop is strict about ease-of-access, permitting no voice, no beats and only one bit of guitar.
And yet, amid these studies in interleaved, not-conventionally-musical sounds, a human, very spiritual intelligence emerges. There's a ghost in the machine, all right, and it's Prekop, making beauty out of the twitch and murmur of circuits.
DOWNLOAD: "Array Wicket," "The Silhouettes" JENNIFER KELLY
