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Spacetime Continuum e` il progetto di Jonah Sharp, che studio` jazz in Scozia
e si fece le ossa nei rave di Londra prima di trasferirsi a San Francisco nel
1991. Il singolo Body Politic (Sadisque, 1991) e` il primo documento
discografico del progetto.
Gli inizi non erano stati molto promettenti, in particolare l'orrendo album
con il profeta dell'acido Terence McKenna,
Alien Dreamtime (Astralwerks, 1993),
le due collaborazioni con Pete Namlook,
Alien Community #1 (Fax, 1993) e
Alien Community #2 (Fax, 1994);
la collaborazione con Bill Laswell,
Visitation (Subharmonic, 1994);
i due volumi di Wechselspannung (Fax, 1994), di nuovo con Namlook;
Electro Harmonix (Fax, 1994) con Tetsu Inoue;
Reagenz (Source, 1994) con Deep Space Network.
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If English is your first language and you could translate this text, please contact me.
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La sigla Spacetime Continuum nacque per l'EP Fluorescence (Reflective, 1993)
e presto si affermo` all'interno del movimento ambient house.
Sea Biscuit (Astralwerks, 1994) diede
credibilita` a un musicista che fino a quel momento era stato
piu` celebre come disegnatore di costumi e coreografo di discoteche.
(Translation by/ Tradotto da xxx)
Se sei interessato a tradurre questo testo, contattami
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Sharp's most celebrated project, Spacetime Continuum, was born with the EP
Fluorescence (Reflective, 1993) and soon established itself within
the ambient-house movement.
Sea Biscuit (Astralwerks, 1994) is the 70-minute seven-track tour de
force that turned this clothes designer into a disco wizard.
His compositions display a psychodramatic tension that transcends ambient music.
Pressure is translucent cosmic music for electronic keyboards that
borders on new-age music. The melodic fantasia opens with a celestial motif of
cascading notes that drives the techno beat.
Rhythm is virtually absent in Floatilla, a similar composition for
floating electronics and psychedelic distortions.
The mood swings can be wild.
Subway is a concerto for subliminal dissonances that harks back to
early Pink Floyd, the electronic avantgarde of the 1960s, the gothic/industrial
pieces of Throbbing Gristle
Here Sharp is at his most cryptic and negative.
Voice Of The Earth is a complex fresco that mixes natural sounds,
watery synths and weak percussions.
The music can turn into a subtle and sophisticated game of textures, as in
Ping Pong, and reaches nirvana in the closing
A Low Frequency Inversion Field, an abstract pastiche of melodic
filaments, cacophonic effects, loose beats and galactic drones.
The celestial mood of the beginning has plunged into the black hole of the soul.
The polished production, the cromatic arrangements and the organic flow of
sound recalls A HREF=ozric.html>Ozric Tentacles' progressive-rock
rather than the masters of techno.
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Sharp non ha perso il vizio dei musicisti elettronici britannici di
lanciarsi dietro tutte le mode e Emit Ecaps (Astralwerks, 1996) lo
converte gia` al jungle, ma se non altro lo fa con classe e fantasia.
Se gran parte dei brani sono epidermici "treni" per discoteca (Vertigo),
Iform e Out Here
sono cataste di suoni che sfiorano
il barocco del collage elettronico.
Sharp si rivela uno degli intellettuali piu` acuti della nuova musica da ballo
elettronica, capace di ragionare sulle effimere mode del tempo e di astrarle
in fantasie sonore di un'eleganza classica.
Sharp eccelle nel distorcere la melodia di una canzone, in maniera che diventi
parte del ritmo, come nel motivo latino decostruito in Swing Fantasy,
o nel tema stratificato di Pod, o nel tintinnio meccanico di
String Of Pearls, che sembra un affresco ambientale di
Harold Budd suonato a velocita` doppia.
Kairo e` una composizione ambiziosa in tre parti:
prima un esercizio di fluttuazioni e cicli minimalisti, poi una prova di
tecniche dub, "drum'b'bass" e acid-jazz, e infine una coda di nuovo
minimalista.
Il progetto Space Continuum sembra pero` essere morto per lasciar spazio
ai piu` pretenziosi lavori pubblicati a suo nome.
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Like too many British electronic musicians of his age, Sharp seems to run
after every new fad. Emit Ecaps (Astralwerks, 1996) marks his conversion
to jungle, but, if nothing else, it does so with style and imagination.
If several tracks are mere dance "locomotives" (Vertigo),
Iform and Out Here
are heaps of sounds that hint to a baroque form of electronic collage.
Sharp excels at warping the melody of a song, so that it becomes part of the
rhythm, as in the deconstructed latin tune of Swing Fantasy,
or the layered themes of Pod, or the mechanical tinkling of
String Of Pearls, that sounds like an
accelerated Harold Budd ambient sound-painting.
The 12-minute Kairo is a complex composition in three
parts: first an exercise in minimalist fluctuations and cycles, then a
rehearsal of dub, "drum'b'bass" and acid-jazz techniques, and again a
minimalist coda.
Sharp is undoubtedly one of the most cunning intellectuals of modern dance
music, capable of manipulating his age's sonic stereotypes and abstracting
them into sonic fantasias of an almost classical elegance.
Unfortunately, the Space Continuum project seems doomed to disappear and make
room for the more pretentious works published under his own name.
rEmit rEcaps (Astralwerks, 1996) is the remix album.
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Spacetime Continuum riemerge con Double Fine Zone (Astralwerks, 1999),
un lavoro che riporta Sharp alle sue radici jazz, anche se
Biscuit Face e Spin-Out continuano a fornire materiale per
le discoteche techno.
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Spacetime Continuum resurfaced with Double Fine Zone (Astralwerks, 1999),
a work that mostly
(The Ring, Beveled Edge, Freezone, Manaka)
harks back to Sharp's studies of jazz
(thanks to saxophonist Brian Iddenden), although
Spin-Out still targets the techno discos and the surreal
cubistic pastiches of Microjam and Biscuit Face nod at Autechre.
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