Alexander Rishaug

The concept of sculpting virtual landscapes through sound is certainly nothing new — hell, even Debussy was able to capture the feeling and essence of the living ocean by employing a full orchestra on "La Mer.” But nowadays glitch composers like Oslo’s Alexander Rishaug are more concerned with taking the straight source (captured through field recordings) and fucking with it in their computers to recreate what they believe to be some sort of secondary landscape. Possible Landscape succeeds by coming up with a slew of original glitch sounds and presenting them in a fairly organic way, but fails by adhering to common ambient and glitch structures. When glitch gods like Oval, Gas or General Magic record a track, the results truly sound like an extraterrestrial’s observations on trajectory or soil sampling, but when Rishaug does it, it sounds like a predictable hike through a familiar suburban neighbourhood.