Janek Schaefer | Alone at Last| sirr0031

062008 The Wire Magazine Alone at last is nonetheless as coherent as it is rewarding. The London based artist's sources include innumerable records, some played on his notorious Tri-Phonic Turntable, and field recordings that have been layered and processed with effects pedals, computer and mixing desk to create pieces that establish a heightened sense of place and time. The titular opening track sets temporal and spatial coordinates by contrasting sheets of rain against a tin roof, with individual drips dropping into buckets below - the listener is inside - most of the water is outside, and everything is fine right now. Looped clarinets flecked with groove grit, loom in the mix, further imparting a sense of immediacy.
Schaefer works with a broader time span on the 19min "Come on up...". It mixes a sequence of dense, droning keyboard and orchestral samples with steps echoing down a hallway with sexually charged Spanish TV dialogue recorded in his hotel room, and a flamenco record that he played at the nights gig. Like most hotel rooms, it could tell any number of stories.
Almost as long, "All Bombing Is Terrorism" highlights another aspect of Schaefer's music. The title is strident, but the music is not. Composed entirely with tones obtained from an online version of the Rhythmicon, an early electronic keyboard, it is a lovely study of gently abraded, drifting tones. Who thinks about anything but self-defence when they're being smacked upside the head? By paring a sonic space that invites contemplation with a message that bears consideration, Schaefer opposes violence non-violently, and applies attractive sound art to sterner purposes.

062008 Vital Weekly Schaefer takes every day sound - field recordings - of whatever nature and transforms them into pieces of music. He does that to such an extent that the 'original' field recordings have disappeared and what remains is, quite curious in these eighth pieces, a highly 'drone' and 'ambient' piece of work. Schaefer works the mood here. The same subtle processing, taking the musique concrete into an entirely new realm - at least for musique concrete that is - the form of ambient music. Schaefer delivered a great disc, I think, of highly subtle music that should win him new fans and pleasantly surprise the old. (FdW)

Anthony Pateras | Chasms | sirr0030

072007 Vital Weekly
What a great release it is. Pateras opens a fascinating world.
072007 Tribune de Genéve
Anthony Pateras knows precisely what he wants. To be an electronic orchestra all by himself. Recover the richness of artificial sounds with acoustic-artisan recipees. With "Chasms", the composer-improviser opens a fracture in perception. One can swear to listen in the course of the three movements the clicking sounds of a fantastic sampler, a horde of virtual gamelans, a cloud of bells, the appeal of glass. All an electronique bestiary achieved simply by striking metal and paper inside a black sinkhole that we call a piano. Vertiginous.
072007 The Wire Magazine
Chasms is a solo project that takes prepared piano seriously and delivers exhilarating results. (...) This music has depth – and it’s depth with content, not just a resonant hollowness. Cage and Ligeti may have shown the way, but that content is Pateras’s own and it‘s certainly worth hearing.
full reviews here

steve peters | three rooms | sirr0029

072007 Vital Weekly
Three rooms, each with it's own characteristic and approach in sound (...) together make a very coherent house. The final piece is 'Mountains Hidden In Mountains' becomes a highly contemplative piece of music. It's the least complex of the 'Three Rooms', but one of an infinite beauty. Drone, meditative, this is elevating the listener just above the ground.
full reviews here