Arcane
Devices: Engines of Myth
by David Lee Myers
ReR Megacorp, Thornton Heath, UK, 1988-2003
(CD)
12.50
http://www.rermegacorp.com.
Reviewed by Curtis E.A. Karnow
David Lee Myers bemoans J.S. Bach. Myers
makes closed electronic feedback loops,
and so even the Moog keyboard violates
the implied rule: No outside input. "[E]lectronic
sound is a pulse of the cosmos which never
heard of J. S. Bach, much as I might appreciate
the genius of that other music. The electron
rules its own universe" (http://www.pulsewidth.com).
Myers fabricates machines, including the
Feedback Workstation, which he used to
make most of the Arcane Devices' tracks.
The "improvisations for feedback" album
was originally released in 1988 and re-mastered
for the current 2003 CD.
These are not free-range electrons, though.
Myers very carefully massages their stream,
and bits of the music are indeed indistinguishable
from early Moog, such as Dick Heyman's
Electric Eclectics. To be sure, Myers
is far more abstract and industrial than
popular Moog, but the tone intervals and
timing are surgically composed. Imagine
patches contributed by Jimi Hendrix, arranged
on the fly by an infinitely flexible metronome.
But this is little more than a proof of
concept, though: Perhaps because Myers
works alone, the tapestry is thin, no
more than one to two tracks. A guy in
a junkyard, hammer in one hand and tongs
in the other, starting up motors, shredding
cables, methodically smashing hoods and
breaking glass, just to see what he can
come up with.