Monday, October 20, 2008

Ezekiel Honig – Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band

Ezekiel Honig has spent a couple of years behind the scenes of his Anticipate label, building a base of fresh talent in the minimalist electronic field. On his own first offering he has etched the closest thing one could imagine to a Richard Chartier dance album. There is the buzz of distant voices, the dry echo of little collisions in empty space and a warm musical tone that seems almost overheard rather than made. Beats act as reminders of more solid states, hard angles that occasionally add order to the drift. The pulses and noises do repeat, but often in less than metered progressions, lending another layer of organic identity to the sound. Clutches of piano notes run over themselves in “Displacement,” creating a little cauldron of half-melody. Mark Templeton’s guitar haunts spaces that are wider and more open like “Porchside Economics part” and “Past Tense Kitchen Movement.” But for the most Surfaces has a slight claustrophobic undertone of “what’s he building in there,” but in an urban setting.

Anticipate

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