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Reviewed by: TJ Norris

A deluxe package these boys have boxed for us. Not only do you get the 2XCD set but you get a duplicate set (just like their 1st edition of this series) to give away to the bud of your choice. This would ordinarily be a good thing – but here it is freakin’ amazing! Why do I say this? Because you would be exposing the unexposed to the sounds of the moment with artists like Shuttle 358, Carl Stone, Francisco Lopez, Tetsu Inoue, Taylor Deupree, Reynols, Kim Cascone and John Hudak included here among others. The finished package comes in a nicely designed box with delicate transparent sheets, each supplying information and quips about the tracks.

Like 12K’s intimate LINE series disc one (subtitles 789 breaths) is a real headphone listen. The quiet atmospheres from Gal and Josh Russell simply merge into one another fluidly. It’s not until Dale Lloyd’s “Fleeting Recollections of the Snow Plai”n that a certain static is generated that, in barely audible tonalities, nudges the dome of silence. Seattle’s Matt Shoemaker contributes the super subtle “Charm”, with the resonance of the halo of a sulfuric asteroid. In its low whistling drone its cinema is defined through its mid-track emergence and fizz, weighted and searching. On “M” Electric Company takes all of the Los Angeles attitude for granted in its subversion of the beat. This completely ambient track has vaguely organic and endless horizon line.

Closing disc on is Hudak’s “Radio Past” in which the source is an unknown wax cylinder recording, maybe filtered, deliberately translucent – like a marching band in a can!

As disc two (194, 415, 960 samples) emerges from the silence of Francisco Lopez and Otaku Yakuza we are instantaneously rapt by Akira Rabelais’ “Disjectimembrapoetaeeatelich” a vernacular is built from static electricity. Its mini rumblings are harmonized and multiplied, dissected and set free. Saarbruecken-based Stephan Mathieu serves the infection and repetitive duplicate “Flake” made up of millions of teeny tiny particles of sound. Diapason Gallery director and New York-based composer Michael Schumacher’s “Still” is anything but what the title infers. This quirky track sends numerous ecstatic sound bubbles into the environment to implode, retrace, multiply and move rapidly about.

The symphonic chamber of Japan-based Carl Stone rings on the laptop created “Tefu.” The completely digital track has an organic core and a shifting modality of happenstance. Taylor Deupree’s “Inharmil” breathes by way of a timed apparatus. In its construction there is a low fidelity rumble of what cautiously sounds like a distant factory with a flatbed engine and conveyor belt on auto-run. There are subtle sharp flashes of fizzling sparks, and the rest is atmosphere.

The fullest track here is “Groundwater” by Sweden’s Jonas Lindgren based on the dramatic floods and breaking dams in Sandsvall 2001. Here he has truly captured a live entity and embellished its roaring nature.

This set may scare some, and may induce to sleep – but by far it is one of the highest quality collections of the year, taking needed risks with a developing genre.