The first track of CV & JAB’s Landscape Architecture, dubbed “Stone Circle”, begins with soft, reverb-laden piano playing, and then the clink of glasses can be heard. The sound of a car passing, and soon some birds chirping also accompanies the piano. Another car passes, and then another. The sound of voices speaking can be heard at a very low volume, and then a vehicle passes, making more noise than usual. The piano playing continues, until the piece ends.
“Down a passageway” starts with two ominous-sounding notes that repeat, and what sounds like a brass instrument soon accompanies it. The two note repetition develops a little more, and there is a key-slide which is played first clean, and then progressively sped up. The piano sound is altered a bit briefly, and a synth pad plays along with the “normal” piano part as well as the sped up sounds. Various permutations of piano, sped up piano, and brass play together, with the out-of-time sped up piano notes serving as a counterpoint to the more conventional piano playing. An indescribable sound of some sort slithers through the mix, and the track ends.
In “Martyr Duck”, a pitch slide is played accompanying the modified sound of water being disturbed, and a voice repeats “martyr duck”. The water becomes a stutter edit, then returns to normal, and the voice repeats once more. This cycle occurs again, and the pitch slide plays downwards instead of upwards once, then slides again, and the track is done.
“Obsolete Dance” is a piece featuring clarinet and brass, with some complex counterpoint between the notes.
“Out of office” begins with a chorused low note, followed by pitch-slid recordings of tones, then some ring-modulation. Notes play sparsely, with the ring-modulation making the sounds metallic-sounding.
“Phantom Tunnel” starts with some piano arpeggios that use quite a bit of tonal range. The bass is mostly constant, while the arpeggios start and stop over the simple line. A droning note of some sort develops in the background, and ramps up and down in volume over the course of the track. As time goes on, the piano playing becomes more intense, and then softens slightly at the very end.
“Empty Courtyard” starts with more piano, this time without bass notes, but featuring more complex chord-work than the previous work, and also arpeggios as well. The notes become sparse about half-way through, then develop a little bit, until a fast arpeggio plays. Then, the notes briefly become sparse again, until the track ends.
A very difficult to describe sound is played at very fast pitches at the beginning of “Pungent Lake”, leaving a constant bass tremolo. Otherworldly sounds are pitch-slid around and played at different pitches. At one point, the distinct, metallic sound of ring-modulation can be heard, but this sounds rather unique, and is thus difficult to explain.
“The maitre d’ is dead” features choir-ahhs playing to a bassy synth as an instrument is faded down to 0 Hz and upwards to high frequencies. The sound of ring-modulated mouth noises can be heard, which are also pitch-shifted. High-pitched noises are then pitch-shifted around, and the choir-ahhs cease, ending the track.
“Lost Coast Haze” features pensive sounding piano, and soon modified metallic sounds come in, with the piano becoming slightly laid back on one level, but frantic on another, playing dissonant arpeggios. The metallic sounds continue, and there are some lower notes that play toward the end of the track, until the end.
“Rearview Mirror” begins with some pitch-slid noise, which is accompanied by piano. A tonal noise is played and pitch-slid. An instrument with the character of a sine wave plays a simple melody. The piano stops playing toward the end of the track, leaving only the pitch-slid noise, which fades out, ending the album.
(https://johnalsobennett.bandcamp.com/album/landscape-architecture, $8 for digital)
