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Songs of the Watchmaker - Later Days | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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 A preoccupation with emergent systems in nature and mathematics has led Wayne Jackson to create his debut full-length album ‘Songs of the Watchmaker', a complex and intriguing web of generative electronic tones. A picture of what looks like a shattered mirror adorns the front sleeve, reflecting the forlorn and ominous mood that becomes a characteristic feature of the album. It forewarns the listener of the fragmented world through the looking-glass, where natural sounds become twisted digital manifestations of their originals, distilled to shimmering sine tones that spin and envelop like some surreal ecosystem. Sadly, this vibrancy is somewhat sporadic throughout the duration of the album and occasional sections appear more like flattened patches of undergrowth in comparison to the flourishing, more developed, tracks. The initial track, ‘evimx 15', is an example of this and makes for a disenchanting introduction to the disc. Sounding farcically like Clangers on a trippy night out, it presents a rather lacklustre selection of computational cycles and FM synthesis tones succeeding only in producing a cold, mechanical array of indistinct gestures. This is deceptive of the curious, magical worlds conjured elsewhere amongst the nine tracks where the sound develops with clearer definition and a better sense of aural engagement is maintained. ‘Family Inharmonic' evokes eerie disembodied voices, ‘evimx 6' evolves minimally like some deliberate drip-torture and ‘Differentiation' makes skilled use of spectral motions and collisions – these are the exceptional creations that Later Days is capable of and are available for your listening consideration by downloading the appropriate accompanying MP3's. Despite my criticisms the album develops and facilitates a pleasantly hypnotic and introverted soundscape, where thoughts disappear into clouds of reverb and the return from within seems like the most unwelcome of tasks. The warmth provided by the glowing tinnitus-tones evaporates as the watchmaker's end-song approaches its downspin. The seconds tick on. Review by DJC de la Haye
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