Tyondai Braxton – HIVE1

Avant compositions with a humane touch...

Even if you weren't aware this release was rendered from Tyondai Braxton's latest experimental performance work, you would feel it.

A granular, echoing conversation between spiralling synthesisers and erratic percussion, intent on sidestepping any familiar beat structure, zooms and flexes between your ears. Transforming your mind, perhaps, into a space as spontaneous and freeform as the one it was made for. There are no chugging riffs from the former Battles frontman here.

Conceived for New York's Guggenheim Museum in 2013 and subsequently taken on tour, 'HIVE1' presents eight pieces composed by Braxton for three percussionists and two old-school modular synth players.

Live, each sits crossed legged atop five striking, individual glowing plinths designed by Danish architect Uffe Surland Van Tams. Connected with headphones, they interpret the other's sounds, working both solo and as one, as a hive. The challenge says Braxton, was to get "real character" out of the machines, to avoid an "ambient tapestry or wash of ideas".

Fans of the masters – Amon Tobin, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher – will take huge pleasure in his uninhibited electronic twists and buzzing alien landscapes. Moments of ambience are quickly scrambled into distorted percussive phrases that mutate like a neverending supply chain of transformers, bodies locking, popping and bursting into new forms faster than the eye, or ear, can follow.

The joy is in the ambiguity and Braxton's exemplary manipulation of sound and space – one can only imagine the sheet music for these pieces. For those that witnessed the full show this is a glistening souvenir. For those that didn't, it's a challenging and enigmatic thrill; albeit one that proves FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out – a very just syndrome indeed.

7/10

Words: Kim Hillyard

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