review from Chris Maples of postdawn nurseries

cntr is Geoff Clarke and Todd Elliott and they claim
to live "in a heavily armed compound somewhere south
of San Francisco". That and their interest in
conspiracy and culture remind me of the vibe in
Interplay's RPG of 1998, Fallout 2. Their debut
full length album 'we are here' has been available
since early this year, and they've gotten quite a
few positive responses to their work from fans on
Myspace.com. My first reaction to their request
for a review was that even though their musick was
obviously loop-based, it had texture and mood in
mass amounts and that I'd be happy to write about
it. When I finally listened to the whole album, I
was more than astounded at how organic and human and
interesting the musick actually was for being
loop-based and computer generated. Of course, it's
not 100% digital, as is evident with all the radio
and vocal samples used, as well as the rare
opportunities they take in singing along to the
spacious and desolate sound they create. Particular
care to feel has, without a doubt, been put into
this album by both Geoff and Todd.


Track one, 'if the truth hurts, wear it', opens with
windchimes and a choral noise build-up that gets
just on the verge of exploding speakers or your
living mate's patience, and then instantly mellows
to a soft pink fuzz that is accompanied by samples
of an interview with Frank Chu, San Francisco's
favorite protestor, discussing the Zegnatronic
Rocket Society. 'tin rain' is aptly named, as it is
an attempt at capturing the mood of melancholy by
using simple sounds processed through short delay
reverbs, giving it a metallic ring. A middle
eastern instrument or vocal sample which fades in
lazily every so often also has that subtle ring to
it. In fact, this metallic sound exists throughout
cntr's sonic journey, adding a post-apocalyptic tone
to all the sounds. 'police helicopter' soars
forward with a high-pitched but filtered squealing
that sounds like cicadas in an alien environment.
It quickly becomes rich with a pulsing percussive
low-end and the tell-tale fuzz that runs throughout
cntr's work on this album. Voices stretched
tonically wail back and forth across the stereo
spectrum. The end is peaceful, yet with an
undertone of dread. 'kate', the fourth track, I'm
guessing utilizes samples of someone named Kate. A
hollow space envelops occasional grunts of pleasure
and time-stretched speech. Again, the 'verb on the
voice is very short and metallic. By a
minute-and-a-half, the vocal samples are being
stretched into thin phasing drones of desolation and
urgency, and extends into nine more minutes of sub
and supersonic gurgles, noise bursts, and saw blade
tenacity. This track ranges from academic
experimental to an all-out Merzbow-like noisefest.
Near the end, we are treated to a casual
loop-centered walk in the jungle. Track five,
'geoff's poetry hour', sounds like an overexcited
journey into DMT space, drunkenly veering into the
jungle sky and including the ancient sounds of
priestly adepts before a virgin sacrifice,
accompanied by a resonant and crystalline tribal
drum machine beat. Track six, 'f cage', seems to me
like a definite bridging of concepts. Incessant
deep house kick drums and a soft melancholic melody
with random and accidental-sounding metal percussion
and noise sweeps and tone bleeps. It is at this
point that the album starts to move away from the
strictly experimental and more toward the
multi-genric. Track 7 is titled 'they shone like
sinners (mr. moron's lament)' and is rife with
fringe elements of slowcore, ala Stars of the Lid.
A slow vibrato on a xylophone-like synth and buzzing
and creaking swirlies with a tremeloed organ harmony
permeate a mood of being alone and disturbed by or
absorbed in feverish memories. In the middle, a
loping percussion actually appears lending more to
the idea of the slowcore influence. Deep jazz xylo
tones creep in, giving it that Angelo Badalamenti
feel up 'til the end. At around 6 minutes, the
drones disappear leaving only the loping rhythm and
deep xylo. Track 8, 'snowblind', also aptly titled,
begins instantly with a clickety-clack Battlestar
Galactica Cylon vocoded voice and metal drone that
reminds of some of Skinny Puppy's more abstract
moments in the Last Rights era. Voice and drone
crossfade into one sound, then split again while
leaving the merged voice. There is actually singing
in this one too, whisperey and seductive. The
distortion gives this song it's name, making a soft
pulse-modulated edge to the synth sounds. A lot of
the distortion on this album sounds pulse-modulated
or bit-reduced. Track 9, 'love', is another
Puppy-ish one. Not as in Puppy's track of the same
name, but in that same timeframe, maybe 'Cleanse,
Fold, and Manipulate' or so. The kick beats phase
and the top tones resonate like a dot-matrix printer
having a shit fit. A chorused distorted
middle-eastern stringed instrument and echoing
post-industrial-style percussion, along with a
spacey juno synthline fill out the sound. Mood on
this one, a little less melancholy than the other
tracks and more energetic, even aggressive. Near
the end, a dark choir announces the end of the
track, and near end of the disk. The last track,
untitled, is almost uplifting compared to the other
darker and more introspective tracks.

In short, if you like experimental of any sort, or
dark minimal that has an organic feel, then this
album is not a bad choice to pick up. It's
definitely mood setting, but not in the
gravitational sense. Sonic themes of future
possibilities, paranoia and release, surrealism,
space travel, and emotionally torn supermen came to
mind several times for me while listening. While it
can easily be compared to experimental or minimal
"goth/industrial" musick of our times, this album is
rampant with textural subtlety and pragmatic mood.
Check out cntr and download samples from their
website, www.cntr-band.com, or listen at
www.myspace.com/cntr.