IsoMonads


Tape

With IsoMonads, entirely made with analog synthesizers, Jarra elaborates further on his earlier sound works. The result is an unmastered, unaltered composition bordering on non-composition. The depth of the sounds in IsoMonads invites you to take an abysmal dive into an undefined world. A world in which we may encounter this certain sense of sound: existing for us, with us, but maybe even more without us?

Excerpts

IsoMonads (Side A) 01 (Excerpt)

IsoMonads (Side A) 02 (Excerpt)

IsoMonads (Side B) 03 (Excerpt)

2019

IsoMonads - Boomkat (Januari 2020)

Jarra cedes control to his analog machines on a tape of absorbingly organic, coruscating drones that recall the work of Deathprod and Kevin Drumm.

Chasing up the recent first digital edition of his 2002 CDr releases for US avant stable, and/OAR, the three ‘IsoMonads’ effectively elaborate on the way Jarra transposed his abstract painting techniques into sound. In his paintings, Jarra worked towards a technique in which his role as painter was reduced only to the essentials, and in his music he attempts to do the same, leaving as much agency as possible with the machines.

The results found on ‘IsoMonad’ allow the sounds of his analog synths to breathe and speak their own language. Left unmastered and unaltered from the initial recording, the two sides resemble a dematerialisation into pure, Ur texturhythm swaddled in the inherent ferric vapour of the format. They’re the sort of sounds that occur where natural and manmade worlds elide, but when nobody is paying attention. On the surface they clearly have a connection to the abstract tonal wilds of Kevin Drumm or the hellish sonic ecosystems generated by Helge Sten a.k.a. Deathprod’s AudioVirus, and on another level they also render similarly alien sensation, if slightly more lo-fi parallel to the algorithmic composition of Roland Kayn and his peer Jaap Vink, likewise illuminating the way into frankly frightening zones of abstraction. Perhaps what the world sounded like before humans arrived, or even after we’re gone and the last one standing forgot to switch off the power.

From Boomkat

IsoMonads