JOHAN SVENSSON (b.1983): Shiver, LISA STREICH (b.1985): Papirosn, ØYVIND MÆLAND (b.1985): Étude Ralentissante, MARTIN RANE BAUCK (b.1988): Misantropi IIIB.

Description: These four pieces all whisper their way through a variety of textures made up of fragmentary sonic gestures. Both the Svensson and Streich consist of mosaics of these ambiguous little sounds, with something more concrete occasionally venturing into the foreground for reasons equally inexplicable. Although entirely acoustic, it is interesting to note how close to electronic music - especially the pioneering efforts produced with basic equipment - these pieces sound at times. This is true of Mæland's piece too, though this work is something of an odd man out here, both in its use of voice, murmuring and burbling like a strange, wandering soliloquy half-heard from a distant room, and its more continuous, linear pulse; here the music has if not a sense of direction then at least one of motion. The Bauck returns to the assemblage of enigmatic small sounds, with even more emphasis on unpitched events and noise textures, of some of which the source is all but impossible to determine. Aksiom.