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Document 2

by Seven Hour Germ

/
1.
ECE Tape 1 01:48
2.
Tone Crunch 03:21
3.
4.
5.
ECE Tape 2 01:08
6.
Bludgeon 03:35
7.
Zone 14 05:21
8.
Wednesday 04:54
9.

about

A great start to the working day to get an album on Minimal Resource Manipulation from Seven Hour Germ which is Matt Atkins AKA Platform. As soon as I hit play 'ECE Tape 1' is a wicked assault on the senses with a gloriously squelchy synth oscillations filling the room. 'Tone Crunch' is a powerful percussive piece with low bottom end and ear piercing top end. This is a lot harsher than the stuff we're used to from Platform, crossing into power electronics territory giving Whitehouse and Merzbow a run for their money. Fear not though as it's not entirely a brutal brain pummeling experience. There are some nice micro sound experiments on here and some top crunchy, abrasive post industrial machine sounds on 'Bludgeon'. The album ends nicely with some ace field recordings/ samples static sounds and drones. A thoroughly engaging listen from beginning to end. Some of the tunes on 'Document 2' were only previously available on cassette.
Norman Records

7HG (otherwise known as Platform) delivers a distinctly experimental set of tracks here on the follow up to the excellent Document 1. Where Platform uses elements of melody and minimalism to create a contemporary flow, 7HG has a much more oblique and noise-based style which is absolutely fascinating. With track titles such as Tonecrunch, Drone Catastrophe and Bludgeon, you'll get the idea of where some of these tracks are headed. Indeed, there's a crispy, overdriven sound to most of the work but it takes the form of various styles. One minute there's an almost Aphex-ish (circa Mescalinum United) rhythmic feel, then you're off into the darker outreaches of minimal sound. Ten Years Later gets a special mention as it's a wonderfully atmospheric sound collage using stitled radio snippets and swathes of sound to create a somewhat disturbing work. Brilliant stuff once again from this talented artist.
Smallfish

Document 2 by Sevenhourgerm (Matthew Atkins) is a CDR including nine experimental tracks released on the Minimal Resource Manipulation label. Found sounds and noise are crafted into varying degrees of coherency, with rhythm and melody flirting at the edge of perception. Each track is short for music typical of this genre, except for the final track Ten Years Later . The analogue synth meanderings of the first two tracks give way to drum and bass inspired samples and noise in the third track, Dronal Catastrophe . Feedback is interwoven until a crescendo is reached, at which point the track changes direction and evolves into rapid fire bursts of static. The pace slows down at track four, Threaded Metals , where lowercase samples with subtle distortion reverberate to give the impression of metallic entities inside a huge hall. The next track, ECE Tape 2 , is similar but more intense as distorted instruments sound like fading memories of music, almost intangible if it were not for the repeated and layered motifs. Track six, Bludgeon , uses a strong rhythm as the backbone with manipulated samples dancing around the beat. It's more Aphex Twin than twenty first Century experimental glitch, and it serves as a centre piece to the rest of the album when listened in context. Next, Zone 14 switches back to the earlier style of the album. It starts off with a passage that sounds like old analogue synthesizers, bringing to mind abandoned industrial spaces and Wednesday continues this, relying on heavier distortion cookie-cut with rapid tremolo. Document 2 ends with Ten Years Later , nine minutes of edited radio samples and more analogue synth-inspired passages. It's almost like a combination of all the other techniques and sonic ideas on Document 2, with improvised passages played by tuning a radio. If so, I presume the piece was performed in April 2008 (there's clearly audible fragments of "UK lorry drivers protesting".)

Document 2 is a diverse foray into noise, glitch and found sounds. The samples are often distorted to the edge of perception, which makes listening to the full album like experiencing somebody else's memories. This abandoned industrial feeling works well, making it more of an experience than a set of tracks.
Furthernoise

credits

released September 6, 2016

MRM06

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Minimal Resource Manipulation London, UK

MRM is not currently accepting demos.

MRM is a DIY label for experimental music curated by Matt Atkins, a London based sound and visual artist whose principle interests are reductionism, chance, repetition and texture. He uses objects, percussion instruments, occasionally a laptop and cassette recorders to create sound collages in both the recorded medium and live. ... more

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