Void Hands | Split Shapes & Divisive Models
Fractal Meat Cuts (CS/DL)
Rhythmic oscillations and electro-click generate the ‘unforeseen order’ that Richard Knight (with Jürgen Ehrmann) concoct via Void Hands’ Split Shapes & Divisive Models. Ironic as the artist namesake is, the handling of audio mixers is nob-crankingly lacking of vacuity. The sour no-input calculations drip with character. Even though the first track is entitled, Not Grooved, ‘abstract groove’ lapses disorder. To quote one of my favorite movies, Pi (1998), ‘If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge.’ Over eight tracks, patterns emerging is exactly what listeners discern in the spasmodic forty-three minute surrender this album insists.
The frequencies may be devoid of traditional instruments but they become fleshed-out in their relatively brief life-spans. None of these tracks is so vibrantly zesty as Dive Bell. The circuitry serves the imagination in the form of some fantasy flock of spectral birds. The aviaries tweet about with an intermittent flat-line as if from a machine that goes ‘ping.’
Soiled follows with a tribal nuance. An ominous and looming session called Hedonist Reserve buzzes in and out of exact time signature. By the time Quantum Pogo and Brux befall a listener’s ear, the hilarity of the titles’ poignant sonic manifolds cracks what might be previously held constructs of meaning. Other than what is transmitted, these compositions couldn’t possibly be anything other than their titles.
To finalize the sort of self-effacing comedy of the album comes Take One, One. The cosseting fidgetry that produces these minimal tech(no) tracks affirms something far more experienced than experimental. The grafted titles beget afferent thesis. What resonates is how potently each individual abstraction tends to make sense. Luminous is Split Shapes & Divisive Models’ compounding wit.
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