Rastascan
Enhancing the correlation linking illegitimate sonic excrescences and inquisitive craftsmanship seems to be the main objective of Robair and Ulher, who recorded this excellent music in the summer of 2008. Through variegated combinations of voltage-induced electroacoustic manifestations and incessantly morphing agglutinations generated by a trumpet with the aid of a radio and a speaker, the couple cogitates about the flexible possibilities of brilliant individualities in comparison, fusing the respective fields of research into a little world of exhalations, utterances and micro-transmissions perfectly defined – almost onomatopoeically, you might say – by the record’s title. The rendezvous between these minds is a productive one, the results thoroughly interesting, aurally enjoyable in their weird joviality and – especially – very distant from the heap of commonplace tricks and tedious attitudes that EAI has been showing in recent times.
The seven tracks comprised by Blips And Ifs are endowed with a biotic quality, the experience frequently equalling that of watching worms writhing in a bubbling liquid. The distinctive percussiveness and the tanginess of the acoustic gamut are, in a sense, balanced by the clever restraint that the musicians choose to privilege throughout these insidious misapplications of creative instinct. Unpremeditated spurts, juxtapositions of tiny obnoxious creatures and putrescent residues, elegant unkindness and pseudo-voices are all parts of an absurd omnium-gatherum that - seen from a distance - is not too dissimilar from the many facets of an ordinary meeting of diverse-minded people. With a big discrepancy: in this place, nobody wants to force a view on the other(s). On the contrary the cooperation to achieve the aim of intelligent impulsiveness is total, the outcome being an album that offers countless angles and alternatives, never failing to suck us up every time we have a new go at it.
