This Boston quartet of instrument builders made a contraption especially for sleek’s Sound/Silence issue, which involves each member donning a belt of guitar strings with a pickup, and chaining themselves together to a central steel triangle with four-metre cables. On Channeling,by leaning in and out to adjusting the tension, they alter pitch and timbre as they bow, strike and pluck, generating a visceral sonic grindhouse effect that scratches deep under the skull. A disturbed hornets’ nest of angry drones leads into a sequence of improvised clangs and thumps, aggravated by microtonal squiggles and twangs from the tortured strings. The mutual interdependence demands a physicality absent from much gallery based sound art.
[audio:https://www.sleek-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/06-Neptune_Channeling.mp3|titles=Neptune_Channeling_2011 (for sleek)]Text by Rob Young