Payne, Maggi / Arctic Winds
Album: Arctic Winds   Collection:General
Artist:Payne, Maggi   Added:Feb 2011
Label:Innova Recordings  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2012-02-25 Pull Date: 2012-04-28 Charts: Classical/Experimental
Week Ending: Apr 8 Mar 25 Mar 18 Mar 4
Airplays: 1 1 1 1

Recent Airplay
1. Apr 04, 2012: Ghost Trees
Arctic Winds
3. Mar 12, 2012: Ghost Trees
Glassy Metals
2. Mar 23, 2012: awyehhhhHhhhhh!
Arctic Winds
4. Feb 27, 2012: Ghost Trees
Apparent Horizon

Album Review
Wedge
Reviewed 2012-02-18
Steely laptop electronics in the form of large-canvas creations. It's noise music, on a grand scale, with big washes of sound pouring over you. Many tracks make me think of winds, or jet engines, in different timbres and tones.

Overall mood is big and bleak, like something ominous is passing overhead (or through your ears). The pieces develop slowly (10 or 11 minutes, usually) but contain enough action or "motion" to keep a listener occupied. Not many quiet spots.

Sound sources/inspirations are explained in the CD booklet. They're fun and surprising.

1- Surging cold winds in different varieties. Quiets down to nothing by around -4:00, then comes back, not as loud. An evil scraping sound appears, just for an instant, in the final minutes.
2- More winds, with more of a scraping element to them. More variety here, with some rattly, echoey sounds thrown in -- something eerie just around the corner. Around -6:45, turns into a nest of rapid clickety sounds, like a fast alien language -- crunchy and damp. Then loud whispers. Last couple of minutes are like rushing air, or sand rapidly falling through pipes.
3- Gentle, high-pitched sounds that start rising (great headphone effects) then dissolves gently into cricket sounds, then samples of astronaut transmissions and a static-electric rain.
4- More wind, not as shrill as other tracks. At one point, a sandstorm dissolves into a quiet liquid creek. It's quiet for a while, then returns to a raging storm.
5- A roaring like air through PVC pipes: hollow, ringing. Later, some sounds of real electricity (Jacob's ladders). Around -4:00, gets near-silent for a slowly building hum and some surging, lightly crackly sounds.
6- A series of gentle metallic sounds, like rainshowers or insect swarms.
7- An itching rattle, like a tiny drill working its way into your synapses. After about 4 minutes, a big airplane sound (actually THIS sounds like BART). -4:20 it gets silent, then phase 2: a very low note, pulsing,

Track Listing
1. Fluid Dynamies   4. Arctic Winds
2. Distant Thunder   5. System Test [Fire And Ice]
3. Apparent Horizon   6. Glassy Metals
  7. Fizz