Standing on a Hummingbird

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ALBUM INFORMATION

Total Tracks: 10   Total Length: 44:25

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philip sherburne

eMusic Contributor

Electronic music columnist for eMusic.com; writer for fishwrap like The Wire, XLR8R, SF Weekly, RES, Nylon, and Wired; columnist for Pitchfork; blogger (www.phi...more »

04.22.11
Glitch gone organic.
2007 | Label: Anticipate Recordings / Iris

Mark Templeton's Standing on a Hummingbird sounds a lot like its title suggests. His processing — cutting and looping sounds at odd intervals, so that an elliptical sense of repetition gets jostled by all kinds of random potholes — has left a digitally cobwebbed air about everything (the now-canonical "glitch" sound familiar from Oval). But glitch music has seldom sounded this supple, as piano reverb washes everything in watery ambiance and nervous guitar figures crabwalk across the skipped digits. Again, it's not without precedent: the way the movements phase slowly into each other in "Amidst Things Uncontrolled" owes a fair debt to Gastr Del Sol's reconfigured roots music, and the fizzy "Difficult to Light" isn't all that far off from some of Loren MazzaCane Connors 'one-note meditations. It's just the way the acoustic material seems to crumble into vague new shapes that's so arresting; a track like "Roots Growing" unfolds like a sheet of paper being crumpled into a ball and lovingly smoothed out again.

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A brilliant debut

brighternow

Related artists: Tim Hecker and Fennesz, eventhough Marks main instrument is guitar. Mark mixes guitar, accordion(?), glitch and found sounds in the most skillfull way. Truely wonderfull melodies pops up and disapears again and leaves the listener in the most blissfull state. Do check out Marks website at: [url]http://www.fieldsawake.com/[/url] where thereīs links to his 2 netlabel epīs, as well as links to his contributions to the wonderfull netlabel Serein(co.uk)īs two compilation releases - Do also check out Markīs band Fields Awake.

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