Scattered Herd

Only two of my top ten picks for 2011 were unreviewed, and, now, today I can say that none are.

I first reviewed Le Berger’s work back in July of last year when all his work was self-released on Bandcamp, all of it quite good I might add. Since that time he’s had a release on Feedback Loop netlabel, . . . On Silence, and another, Cheptel éparpillé, on the new notable Dystimbria. The latter is the subject of this release.

Dystimbria was started late in 2010 by C. Reider, whose work I have review several times on this blog. The concept of Reider’s netlabel is to build a catalog of experimental releases that straddle the space between ambient and noise. But another very interesting twist the Dystimbria is Reider’s insistence that each release though original, must also use samples from previous releases by other artists. Samuel Landry aka Le Berger built Cheptel éparpillé up two other works: C. Reider’s A Stange Seed and mysterybear’s Dysrhytmia. Lowery’s work begins by examining the world of distant static as he slowly adds degrading synths and decaying noises. Though Cheptel éparpillé is an ambient work (though that genre seems so unclear these days), there is an intensity to its sounds and tones.