fluorescent grey

And I thought Eluvium was being obtuse with its album title! Ah, well. Good thing I like these songs so much. Robbie Martin has been making electronic music for ages, and his assembly technique is impeccable. He never dwells too long on a particular sound or idea. Better to cut the sample short and repeat it than let it run too long.

An awful lot of folks could learn from that. Editing is difficult, but particularly important in collage-style electronic music. Martin uses his samples both as "melodies" (such as they are) and rhythms. Sometimes he uses the cuts as a something approaching a rhythm track. Like I said, he's good.

Good enough to make an experimental electronic album that is warm, even though it's filled with pops, crackles and other odd bits of energy. There's never a sense of chaos. Martin imposes a strict order on things even as he is willing to ply the edges of the musical sphere.

One of the best strictly electronic albums I've heard in a long time. There are so many layers to the pieces, it's gonna take me a while to peel through them. And don't worry: I will.

Contact:
Isolate Records
P.O. Box 117598
Burlingame, CA 94011-7598
www: http://www.isolaterecords.com - http://www.aidabet.com/index.html

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Isolated samples collide headfirst with caustic noises that drive nails into floorboards with blind abandon. Break beats intermingle with dark ambient soundscapes. Psychedelic overtures are reined in with filthy synths and maddening mixes. Creative and yet mysteriously eerie all at once, “Lying on the Floor…” is a gentle reminder of how different electronic music can be.

- J-Sin (Link to this music review) - Smother Magazine http://www.smother.net/reviews/index.php

FLUORESCENT GREY puts together an odd but compelling mix of sounds with the unweildy album title " Lying On The Floor Mingling With God In A Tijuana Motel Room Next Door To A Veterinary Supply Room"

Fenella Kernebone - australlian broadcasting company radio

'When a byte of air pressure fluctuations impacts the eardrum, a whole host of phenomena occur. Firstly, the sensorineural data is beamed to the primary auditory cortex. Based on the sound immediately previous, pitch, volume and timbre are determined. Shortly thereafter, (0.05 seconds, or the threshold frequency below which sound is perceived as rhythm) rhythmic properties of the aural moment are deciphered. At about the same time, this primary auditory cortex searches the mind database for matching patterns like 'door closing', 'water splashing', 'electric buzz', 'piano', 'grenade exploding', 'human voice', and appropriate reptilian, emotional, and intellectual responses are queued. The sound of electricity might startle you, a mournful Asian melody might move you to a solemn meditative state, a door closing might lead to the deduction that your room mate is home. When the sound does not match any pattern, it is interpreted then as noise/chaos.

Fluorescent Grey, AKA Robert Martin's 'music' is one of those Intelligent Dance Music anomalies which bleeds the usually binary black-and-whiteness of signal-vs-noise, pattern-vs-chaos, into a shifting grey spectrum. This quantum uncertainty is reflected in the tastefully eclectic title:Lying on the Floor Mingling with God in a Tiajuana Motel Room Next Door to a Veterinary Supply,

Take A percussive song made entirely with the sound of water (that's the efficiently self-describing name of the track). The track begins with a lot of spraying, burbling, splattering, swishing and one imagines a kiddie pool in summer; no readable pitch or rhythm at first, just a lot of wet noise. Gradually, the chaos takes coherent shape, the garden hose becoming high hats, the burbling bass, the splattering snares, swishing cymbals. This sort of psychoacoustics bending is present throughout; people talking turning into melody, electricity modulating from arrhythmic hum to sequenced rhythm and the like.

The most brilliant aspect of Fluorescent Grey to me is the sheer sound-design ingenuity. On the final track, whose theme is morphing, the sound of a drum actually sounds as though it is "becoming" a piano; as though the drum heads are stretching and elongating into piano strings, and the birds-to-dolphins bit is reminiscent of the pioneer tweaker-heads like Aphex Twin.

The skeleton of the music itself is largely these refractions of tribal/drum-and-bass rhythms constructed of deconstructionalist machine digestions of everything from Kabuki music to Indian to *gasp* actual drums to computer-noise-head buzzing and grinding. The production style is rather 'halogenous' in that the tone is crystal-crisp with a digital brightness and booming bass that leaves the mids albeit sucked out.

It's safe to say that this is the sort of high-cerebral, abrasive avante-gardeness that is not for everyone. There isn't much in the realm of easily feet-tappin grooves or strong memorable melody and the 'signal' does dissolve into eardrum-fracturing chaotic noise for long periods of time. Especially the first few tracks, that dance between something like shattering glass, utter chaos and the sound of thunderstorms, which might be considered music only by computers, aliens, and programmers. However, if you're into the whole mind- music IDM thing or if you just want to hear some really intriguing and out-there sound experimentation, you'll definitely want to give Fluorescent Grey's brilliant paradigm-blurring debut a listen (and probably some considerable thought).' - Christian of Cerebrasm - Cerebrasm

Fluorescent Grey - I am a photograph of my old driveway, the edges of the photograph are made of cartoon cow's teeth, as the cow's mouth closes i explode into a firework cloud of red and green dog biscuits

First up is a release on Isolate Records from Burlingham, California, the label responsible for Venetian Snares’ debut in 2000. The artist is Fluorescent Grey and the album is snappily titled ‘Lying on the floor mingling with god in a Tijuana motel room next door to a veterinary supply store’, due for release in July 2006. It’s an accomplished album of experimental electronica (think Autechre with Matthew Herbert’s fondness for found sounds), packed with innovative ideas including a track where the beats are derived completely from samples of water. Available to download here is ‘I am a photograph of my old driveway, the edges of the photograph are made of cartoon cow's teeth, as the cow's mouth closes i explode into a firework cloud of red and green dog biscuits’ – try phoning and requesting that one on the radio! It’s a unique idea for a track. The original source material was composed in a sequencer and then played on a tape recorder at 30 different locations. Each location was recorded with a stereo microphone and the resulting track is all the locations edited together to reform the song. OK, so it’s exhausting just trying to explain it and sections do resemble the tune Chris Morris played to demonstrate the effects of Cake on ‘Brasseye’, but I’m all for people pushing the boundaries once in a while and the album is well worth tracking down.

Fluorescent Grey artist page on Isolate Records website
Buy from the Isolate Records online store here

-Joe Clay - http://www.spoiltvictorianchild.co.uk/