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You may have to dream your way into Ian Boddy's domain of shadows. His Modal Operandi (47:08) presents seven think pieces of fascinatingly strange and abstract quality. Defined by their wide-ranging sound and unexpected innovatory precision, we find Boddy's achievements to be technical as well as artistic. His work here connects directly to the true function of thought, heading somewhere safely outside conventional commercial preoccupations - and straight on to the realm of the mind. Escaping the electronic lair we rise to float upon a layered harmonic haze. As tones crawl out from underground the consuming furnace of creativity rumbles and booms. Emphatic vertical lines imbued with a magnitude of doom synths produce a feverish frisson. Dramatic in an ambient way everything on Modal Operandi is effected profoundly by the subtlest of gesture, communicating to the listener in its exclusive sonic language. Even though breathing textures configure clouds of complex concepts, we will always be able to hear the signal within the noise. While modular circuits are humming, thrumming and glowing, amidst such grinding smooth oscillators we must remember to seek the human aspects of this album - all that its wires, metal and PCBs cannot realize on their own. Carried by pure imagination Modal Operandi reveals beauty for its own sake - and asks our world to expand to accommodate its meaningful message.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 29 February 2023 |
