Alms

The second full-length from this genre-defying duo is a sombre and richly-detailed work that invokes a dystopic environment where the 'natural' and 'organic' are inseparable from electricities, radioactivities and the detritus of military-industrial technologies and materials. Through micro-recordings of metallic objects and resonances, field recordings, and raw filter-bank improvisations, Aden Evens and Ian Ilavsky construct a sonic landscape of polluted signal sources, weaving tentative, fading signs of humanism into the mix by way of piano, organ and drums.

Alms is an invocation of and lament for the distortions and remainders left in the wake of 'growth' and 'stability' (its local system of audio paths and patches reflecting the garble and garbage of the global); a confession of computer indulgence and easy access to technology and creative play; a tiny sonic treatise on the poverty of our times and how we shield ourselves from it, with various modes of more or less sublimated imposition, pillage, distraction and denial.