Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Firehand — Scattering Spectrum
(Bandcamp no#, 2024, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-01-02

Scattering Spectrum Cover art

It won’t take more than a minute for the listener to recognize that they are on an alternate musical path, one of shadows and textures, transitory auditory abstractions, and a dreamlike assault on the senses. Firehand is the ambient electronic project of composer and synthesist Robert Logan, who also releases material under his own name. While previous Firehand releases have walked a thin line between colorfully melodic ideas and mysterious floating ambient drift, Scattering Spectrum follows a more granular essence with dark shadowy vibrations calling out from places unknown, thunderous sonic mayhem embellished with cryptic obscurities, and surreal vaporous clanging and crashing, from another nightmarish soundworld. While Logan refers to this as an E.P., probably because it only contains five tracks, the shortest of the five is a full twelve minutes, with others reaching out to as long as fifteen, for a total playing time of well over one hour. That’s my kind of E.P.! The opener, “Molten Light,” introduces many of the sounds and constituent textures that will appear throughout all five pieces, and many of these will be developed in varying degrees as the program proceeds, some harsh and abrasive, others more subtle and gentle, as in the revelatory “Song of Smoke” where ideas stretch out into a far reaching concept. There is no title track, but “The Clouding” might well serve, exploding and scattering bits of sonic shrapnel in all directions, hues of brilliance and darkness folding over one another as dimensions twist and curl into various formations. Beginning as a seemingly typical floating ambient structure, “Above the Blur of the Sky” slowly transforms itself, the smoothness that opened the number giving way to more gnarled textures and shimmering sensations that warp expanses, eventually falling through a mysterious portal where voice samples can be faintly heard under all the ruckus and noise, through a clearing where beautiful angelic voices propel the journey forward to its conclusion. A majestic ending to the closing track.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Robert Logan / Firehand

More info
http://firehandmusic.bandcamp.com/album/scattering-spectrum

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.