Like most delicate physical entities, magnetic tape — a potential carrier for sound, music or other information — tends to degrade over time. If music is contained on said tape, it can diminish in amplitude, become transformed, or disappear entirely. The music that Ravi Binning presents as Thought Broadcast appears to have been prepared on a spool of magnetic tape and subsequently hidden in a bomb shelter for decades. The frayed electronic textures and subtle beat patterns that he produces on Votive Zero are buried in an ocean of murk such that the half-evaporated subtlety of the music is best ascertained via the use of high quality headphones.
Mutant dub is certainly a touchstone (as evinced by track titles such as "Wanderer Dub"), as is the careening maelstrom of home-brewed electronic cacophony that was Throbbing Gristle. Yet Binning uses his influences as merely a jumping off point, choosing instead to reside in a sonic space of his own creation. His is a world worth exploring, as intriguing as it is grotesque.
(Editions Mego)Mutant dub is certainly a touchstone (as evinced by track titles such as "Wanderer Dub"), as is the careening maelstrom of home-brewed electronic cacophony that was Throbbing Gristle. Yet Binning uses his influences as merely a jumping off point, choosing instead to reside in a sonic space of his own creation. His is a world worth exploring, as intriguing as it is grotesque.