Sand

Released four years after 7, Sand is Philip Jeck's eighth solo album and a definite pick of the crop. While 7 had been a letdown from Stoke and the Vinyl Coda series, Sand rekindles the flame of the turntablist's uncanny artistry. The format remains the same (seven tracks of short to mid-duration), the modus operandi remains pretty much the same too (several record players, cheap keyboards, and now mini-disc recorders), but the results are a couple of notches above the bland 7, moving back to the creative peak achieved with Stoke. Jeck is at his best when he is a sloppy droner, weaving textures but "dropping" them, letting suddenly harsh sounds cut through. Sand consists of seven separate pieces, but fanfare recordings appear in three of them, giving the album a sense of direction ("Fanfares" features an insistent snippet from Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, while "Fanfares Forward" and "Fanfares Over" push that element beyond recognition). "Chime Again" is a delicate piece based on recordings of church bells. But the disc's highlight is the opening "Unveiled," a slowly developing piece in which turntables tell a number of parallel stories, strands of sounds transforming side by side, never quite crossing paths or being brought together, simply coexisting as simultaneous, complementary ideas. It seems that Jeck's sound art will always be rougher around the edges than Janek Schaefer's or Claus van Bebber's — unfaded entries and exits, arbitrary end edits — but that is part of his unsettling power. Truth is, that's also what made 7 too comfortable for its own good. ~ François Couture, Rovi