Olivia Block

Dissolution

BY Nilan PereraPublished Nov 22, 2016

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Olivia Block's new release is comprised of two long tracks involving found sounds, instruments, microcassettes and radio signals, and, according to a press release, "a reflection upon human 'webs of significance,' and an investigation into the ways that electronic communications technologies, both past and present, facilitate, complicate and transmute the formation of these webs."
 
This is a form of music theatre or cinema, as the sound itself occupies the space of specific events, entrances and exits and the folding into and out of layered textures.
 
In that and the precision of the mix, there is a method and compositional integrity evident in the ways that musical/tonal elements coexist with crackles, buzzes and muffled voices.

There is also a significant use of stereo imaging that lends itself to an even more heightened sense of occasion. While ostensibly ambient in nature, in terms of how the general feel of how the sound/music flows, one shouldn't make the mistake of listening and not expecting narrative — there is a linear and present one in each piece on Dissolution.
(Glistening Examples)

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