HC3
More good news from Pat Gillis, whose aural fantasies make great use of synthesizers, effects and tape manipulation to achieve results which many knob-tweaking nerds can’t even daydream in terms of creative fantasy and inventiveness. A couple of titles here should give an idea about what to find: “Orchrustra” and “Morphantasia” are precisely what one would expect while travelling across the lands where the reshaping of human discernment is a daily practice. Large portions of this material were recorded directly onto two tracks during live performances, yet there’s a specific structural design in what we hear, typical example of a mind ready to catch the most infinitesimal signal to transform it into striking figurations coloured by unhinged, often plain amazing timbres.
Synthetic morsels of deeper perception, intoxicating diffusions, corrosions of remote harmonies and ringing-around orbiting bodies let us recall different exploratory eras at once; we notice an evident respect for earlier-period pioneers and an attentive ear on the evolutional side of electronic music. Gillis knows what he’s doing and Back To Minus is a highly enjoyable demonstration of the development of his sonic ideals, a perfect proportionality between the chaotic activities of contradictory anti-patterns and the intricate mechanisms that – miraculously - preserve an ideal “galactic equilibrium”.
