____twoism

Since its inception, Herb Recordings has sought to release music that embodies pop accessibility while continuing to push at the frontiers of experimental electronics. Occasionally, though, an artist with highly unique talent can persuade a label to extend its own definition. Jack Marchment is such a man. His latest album, “Who’s Afraid of Iannis Xenakis?” fleetingly approaches contemporary electronic artists only at oblique angles, before suddenly deflecting into an unknown universe. Encoding Jack's music in DNA might result in something comparable to an echidna, exhibiting the telltale signs of multiple species while simultaneously defying all of them...and eliciting the adoration and bewilderment of many in the process.

His most recent outing opens with "Schult-Abbey", a track rooted in a dizzying, indecipherable vocal chant and stereoscopic, staccatoed rhythms, masterfully glued together with strikingly emotive synthwork. The following tune, "Putney", forecasts what the masterful ambient aesthetic of Global Communication's "76:14" would have been in the 21st century, had Mark Pritchard continued into space instead of diverting to Detroit. From here, the album plunges into an acid-bath of soundscapes and sampled textures until "Countach Sound" awakens the ear with a momentary lesson in Untilted-era Autechre-ese...before promptly segueing into something completely different (though here, that's nothing unusual). For the initially timid listener, the superb analog sweeps of "Brabham and Company" bear more than ample respite from the otherworldly.

Though it's an overused word in the music industry, "Who's Afraid of Iannis Xenakis?" is genuinely unpredictable. Even the seemingly-clear-titled "Delia Dub" only barely drifts into dub territory towards its end, and in a way strictly on Jack's terms. Though some may find it a trying listen at first, this is an album with an immensely varied sonic pallet, covering a dense community of sounds and textures every few seconds, occasionally in stunningly three-dimensional binaural audio. For those restless with standard or less daring UK electronica, this is an album to explore (preferably with a good pair of Seinheisers).