Genre: Experimental / Rhythmic Noise

01 Glass Forest One
02 Glass Forest Two
03 Glass Forest Three

One of the greatest difficulties with the plethora of available works in your average distro outlet’s catalogue is that no-one can possibly get to hear everything; sometimes, as in my case, you make a mental note to purchase a CD by a particularly intriguing sounding artist only for something else to come along that diverts both your attention and hard-earned cash. I am guilty as charged when it comes to the artist speared by the harsh light of the review spotlight here; Daniel Menche has been on my list of ‘must investigate’ artists for over a year now and, as I have discovered since finding a home here at HH, if I wait long enough then something by one of the people on that list will float my way – and my patience has been rewarded in this instance with the arrival of his latest release on my desk.

Listening to Menche’s music is like being privileged enough to watch an entire species evolve and mutate from the very beginning – the musical DNA composing the bedrock of these pieces is constantly being subjected to chance mutations, with new and interesting iterations giving rise to new adaptations and organisms. I felt like I was looking through the eyepiece of some vast cosmic microscope, witnessing the cells divide and replicate, subsuming others and being subsumed in turn. Even though Menche utilises noise elements in his work, it isn’t the random static often associated with the genre – instead there’s an underlying structure informing the evolution of each strand that composes the make-up of each piece, that musical DNA I talked about earlier, with order and rhythm emerging from the background chaos which in turn devolves back to disorder when the mutational event occurs, before once more giving way to structure and definition. This is exemplified here in the way the soft blankets of noise slowly clump together to form emergent and quietly insistent rhythms, which are equally slowly sent back to the chaos from which they were initially birthed, only to begin the cycle anew.

One of the nicest aspects of these three lengthy pieces was the manifold qualities they exhibited quite apart from the evolutionary and organic ones mentioned above – for instance the music possesses a fractal quality to it, as if I could dive headlong into it and no matter how deep I dived I would see the underlying structure repeat itself endlessly. In addition, although the music displays a superficial delicacy and brittle glass-like fragility, don’t let that fool you for one second; there’s a spiky hardiness that is entirely capable of surprising and delighting by turn, in the same way that a spider’s web, despite appearing delicate and easily torn, can withstand quite a lot before breaking but delighting with its biologically-engineered artistry. This is indeed a common theme in nature – superficial and physical fragility belying a tensile strength beyond immediate impressions and it’s captured perfectly here; indeed if this was one of Mensche’s intentions here then he has indubitably succeeded admirably.

Of all the pieces however, my favourite is the twenty-four minute opener, ‘Glass Forest One’, ringing glassine bell-tones hovering insect-like over a field of rumbling crunch, a rhythmic figure slowly emerging from the cocooning background noise chrysalis-like, the colours fully developing as the piece progresses. The wing-beats take flight and soar over the forest below, the sounds spiralling up on the thermals in an ecstasy of untrammelled freedom; eventually settling back to earth again, comfortably within the safety of the crystalline tree-like growths. It’s a stupendously majestic piece, lifting the listener up in parallel to witness the breathtaking panorama below while the wind supports effortlessly and gracefully.

This is absolutely beautiful music, in that piercingly fragile way that ice creates patterns on glass and fronds; simultaneously it impresses with its crystalline clarity and strength. This is living, breathing organicity personified in sound, celebrating the seemingly chaotic freedom and flexibility of life while at the same time underpinning those very same attributes with a sense of order, in much the same way that DNA dictates real life. Now that I have made an acquaintance with the work of Mr. Menche, I shall surely get to know him better by visiting some of his previous offerings – if this is anything to go by then I must be in for something of a treat.