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The music of Field Lines Cartographer (synthesist Mark Burford) seems stuck in the future. Portable Reality Generator (69:21) deftly blends consonance, modular experimentation and imaginative aural invention in a slow-burning circuit softening surround emanating from a time yet to come. As sounds swirl together in a circulation of synthetic spirit this album puts forth its aspirations - and lifts itself above the ordinary. Slipping in occasional moments of dreamy uncertainty Burford mainly pulls from the warmer tone colors. Openly generating ideas the neural correlates of Portable Reality Generator evade the effects of the waking world - unreeling through a gradually disintegrating Ambient style. In a mounting montage of floating modulations the six tracks pass through the listening space, stirring to life the deeper feelings and emotions not so often noticed. He shows himself to be capable of producing a rare sonic intricacy, and combined with various electronic accents and inflections this beautiful work leads us flowing and glowing into an unknown zone somewhere outside of average existence. Burford ranges across today's Electronic Music with such clarity and distinction that to attend his album is to have an encounter with the better world that Portable Reality Generator imagines. Up from darkly shaded moods of unsymbolized thought to flashes of patch cord poetry, this inspiring volume is an intimate work sure to prompt reflections in those bright enough to listen.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 13 June 2024 |
