Andreas Berthling
"tiny little white ones (like handfuls of salt)". CD
Mitek. mitek3cd Sweden
Unspeakably gorgeous,
or mouse squiggles?
Berthling's focus
is refined computer audio within an interestingly limited frequency
range, like painting with only shades of light blue. Each track
begins a short phrase which triggers countermovement, which in turn
agitates more movement: like Ping-Pong balls set on mousetraps.
It reminds me of
the first paint program I got for the Mac classic: I spent hours
moving layer upon layer with fast mouse movements. At 14 years old
I thought my images were a new art and printed them off proudly.
Obviously a lot of energy and equipment went into making them, but
they were missing so much -- they did not go beyond the programmer's
designs. Berthling's tracks sound better than my paint squiggles
looked, but they have the same boyish wrist energy.
The cover art on
his digipak illustrates my idea: drawing program squiggles zip in
and out, the eraser tool does a neat little trick of fragmenting
the image with wrist flick motions. You can sense the energy and
see quick pixel mark making.
The first track
is the most convincing, and leaves evidence of life beyond technique.
It is unselfconscious and fluid in the same way as an 11 year old
girl riding a skateboard alone in her parent's backyard on a cool
fall saturday afternoon. The point where MAX patches are the vehicles
to somehow express the human condition instead of gear fetish by
the new boywonder, is when electronic music is art and not a capital
byproduct.