Caffeine

Just as you can make diamonds out of coal with enough time and pressure, so too can you generate warmth from cold zeroes and ones. Christopher Bissonnette’s work is not simply the end result but also the sound of the transformative process. Opener "In Accordance” provides a simple assurance in the form of repeating and evolving piano notes, that music is at the root of the work and continues throughout, though at times subliminally. At other intervals he strips the digital sound waves nearly bare to approximate what fish trapped below pond ice might hear in the crisscrossing sweeps of skaters. Bissonnette leaves in sound "mistakes” that occur during editing. Clicks of abrupt track slicing and the digital "wow and flutter” of over-amplification give the effect of breath-like expansion and contraction. Each track elucidates a particular sensation yet still connects with the others for a genetic flow. "Comfortable Expectations” evokes watching a great sleeping body’s slow rising and falling, while the follower, "Substrata,” suggests the tingling anticipation of life set to spring up from just below the surface of... well, you pick. "Pellucidity” caps the album with a slight return to its opening theme, but is it an ending or the beginning of a new cycle in sound?