Album Stéme by the French designer/musician eRikm, who lives in Marseilles, is based on several 1-minute sound samples recorded on intentionally damaged disc. To be more precise, not on the samples but on the glitch sounds got in the result. This information can be read on the CD's cover. Reading it you feel like drawing parallels with other musicians who made experiments with similar systems of sound eliciting. But I think we shouldn't do that - Stéme is special, with its unique sounding.Elegance and refinement of digital micro sculptures reign here. Rustles, squeaks, crackle and drone... These experimental collages are charming because if they caught your interest, you will hardly stop listening to it. It demands certain concentration and attention to the successive decoration of the sound stream by its 'sound->soul' converters. Imagine that you caught the radio wave that transmits to your speakers not a broadcast but special, unique for this wave noise. But if you did that you are interested in this noise, you want to hear and feel it, deepen into it. It concerns this album too - if you consciously decided to listen to it, than unforgettable, interesting immersion is guaranteed. Immersion into the world created by, to all appearances, banal, simple event - error while receiving the digital signal.
Track "White Out" is worth special mentioning. Its duration equals almost half of the album, it's the stream of a little bit sharp, hissing noise. It would perfectly fit in with the whole album if it were 5-6 times shorter. The final version of this unjustifiably long track doesn't arouse the wish to listen to it once more. It seems to be an excessive part of the album.
- eRikm
- Room40