Tim Olive / Anne-F Jacques

By Ken Waxman

Like the soundtrack for a building-site documentary, sound artists Anne-F Jacques from Montreal and Kobe-based Tim Olive use magnetic pickups, and amplified rotating surfaces to create germane industrial-style improvisations. Ironically, for players who reside in two of the world’s most technologically sophisticated countries, the result appears to symbolically reflect the grinding turbulence of an early Industrial Revolution factory rather than 21st Century high tech. Perhaps however the intersecting crunches, crackles and crumbles produced by the duo’s self-made and altered sound sources are attempting to return to group toil variants of the individual craftsmanship that characterized pre- Industrial Revolution manufacturing.

Another stand-out quality of the program is how acoustic Jacques and Olive’s sound field is. There may be vague suggestions of signal-processed rumbles on the first track and wave-form-like crackles and static on the second lengthier one. But overall as the equivalent textures of glass breaking, jack hammering and in-and-out of focus oscillations accelerate in volume, visions of a Thomas Edison-like back shop work bench crowd out thoughts of a sleek, sterile IBM-like research laboratory. Tooth Car’s first track climaxes with circular wheel-like rumbles which are abruptly truncated by the end. Is it quitting time or delivery time? The second track works in more mechanized allusions ranging from soft-drink-bottle-like pops to assembly-line-like clatters and crunches. Eventually though the rumbles and buzzes become more distant and subtle as a final unvarying organ-like chord gives way to an allusion to more expansive space.

Recorded in two different locations, this CD’s sounds may be as harsh and relentless as any industrial process. But intentionally or not Jacques and Olive have coordinated their altered, but up-to-date equipment to create a fundamental sound program while simultaneously commenting on its excesses.

-A MusicWorks Exclusive Spotlight Review February 2017