sonotope platform

“The trio Radian (the track tester is taken from their new CD “Juxtaposition”, which was released in fall 2004) and Michaela Schwentner, who has translated several pieces by the three well-traveled sound researchers into images, are a proven team. This is a classic music video, though not really. The visuals are too autonomous, even if Schwentner goes along with the sounds at precisely their rhythm, reflects and emphasizes the growing intensity, and helps accentuate the fractures in the soundscape. The audio level is treated with greater respect than in conventional music videos, and the musical foundation is left unaltered rather than being (re)interpreted. Extremely economical abstracted means taken from the real world of chromatic- and tonal-value reduction, their selection and arrangement apparently reflecting the title of Radian´s CD, are employed to create tableaus which are scanned by windows of varying size, shape and number – some of them no more than slits – moving over the black picture, and become wholly visible for only brief sequences. Strictly speaking this involves solely a single motif – varied by means of zooms – the only element which becomes recognizable, as all the other subjects are merely suggested. The images dispense with all eloquence, plot, commentary, unnecessary ballast. The result, in terms of the music, is a strangely coherent “enrichment”: Despite the opulent visual level of the finale, the music remains what it is and can be enjoyed as if heard from a CD-player. And even if – the other way around – you allow yourself to be totally consumed by the images, the music is not forced into the background: images on their way to becoming music.”
[Werner Korn]www.jade-enterprises.at
www.sixpackfilm.com