"Thru, by Australian sound artist Michael Terren, is one of the best things we've heard this year"
–Experimedia
'Thru' is a three-part album exploring Terren’s interest in digital music processes, specifically the tacit condition of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) in contemporary music. DAWs are vital and necessary mediators of virtually all recorded music, yet their status as such is barely questioned. Thru was initially conceived as a conduit through which to interrogate what constitutes DAW practice, or what impact the DAW has had on music and its composition.
'Thru' is not, however, a dry experiment in digital methods – it seeks to probe the subtle auditory cues that emerge from creating and combining sounds ‘in the box’. The results are sharp, clear, and powerful. Split into the trilogy of ‘Thru’/‘FWD’/‘In2’ (commissioned by the Sydney-based radio show Ears Have Ears), the glossy diptych of ‘Vacillate’/‘Vessel’, and the stunning closer, ‘Siliceous’ (which Terren calls “a kind of speculation on the interior lives of rocks and mountains”), these six pieces take divergent paths through the open field of computer-based composition, sometimes restrained and subtle, sometimes brash or overwhelming, always intriguing.
At a time when the benefits of restrictive/authentic/immediate analogue tools are constantly extolled, Thru asks us to consider the role of the DAW in music today – what avenues are still unexplored? What kind of communication is encouraged, or even possible, within this environment? What kinds of logic are preferred there? Thru tests the limits of its origins in a way that feels both new and timely.
–Ian at Fallow Media
credits
released October 3, 2017
Endless thanks to Ian M at Fallow Media (who created the artwork and tapes), Cat H, Lindsay V, Stuart J, Matt M, Brooke and Scarlett at Ears Have Ears, Kate C, the Norðanvindur artists and the Listhús í Fjallabyggð team, Nat C, and many more.
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