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Hectic Tenuous - Chic Nerve | ||||||||||||||||
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 Starting with flanged, panned scratching (ala fingernails, not decks), this solo CDR from The Caution Curves laptop lady Rebecca Mills, is an eleven track melange of textures, echoes, drones, processed field recordings and even the occasional bit of singing! Like the aforementioned Curves, Hectic Tenuous has a naive quality that is charming and feminine. On Avian Jibes Mills "scats" unfashionably along to southern banjo and echoed clarinet and is reminiscient of the very wonderful & long forgotten 23 Skidoo. The echoes continue onto Cerebella Maces, and recede into the background on Clear Lenience, as Ms Mills rattles something around inside a piano. Unfortunately, after a while one starts to see her method here. She likes to use two sounds on each track; a background sound, often some kind of echoed looped rattling that acts as a drone and "the lead sound", which could be a wind instrument or something high pitched. Most tracks adhere to this formula but all offer something different and original as well as being nicely recorded, soft, welcoming and subtle. I listened to this three time before I really listened to it, and this is no criticism, its just that it is so easy to work to. You could write a novel, design a website, paint the bathroom, knit a jumper or read the paper, that that is what you do ! Thats not to say that its muzak, not in the least, but its soothing and welcome. OK, OK, on Red Trek Moon, it all gets a bit more crazed, when an ultra distorted feedback is accompanied by looped vocal and synthesizer doodles, but even this is mixed like its had all the sharp edges lovingly smoothed over, so we don't hurt ourselves. Because of all the extreme noise I have put my ears through in the last few years, including everything from Black Metal to Norwegian Noise, I have now seriously tired of the "See if you can take this, cos this is really extreme noise" while standing in front of a bad PA in a cold church for 3 hours. I seriously crave experimentation like this, that acknowledges that world but is following its own quiet understated petal strewn path, in woolly socks. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Anyway, its lovely. Where are my slippers? ...and my pipe? Review by Mark Francombe
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