Matt Robidoux: Music For Aluminum Corn (Crash Symbols, 2023)
June 25, 2023 at 1:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Matt Robidoux: Music For Aluminum Corn
Matt Robidoux’s
newest album is named for a touch-controlled aluminum synthesizer shaped like two corn cobs, which is featured prominently throughout these compositions. It has some nice fizzy, stringy modular textures, modeled after a Buchla, but this album isn’t just a showcase for a new toy. These are inventive, playful chamber-ish compositions including woodwinds, horns, xylophone, strings, and other instruments. “Shrimp Dance” is a playful, ringing xylophone-driven piece with whirling, spinning synths and post-industrial rhythms. Other tracks like “Escalator from Dreamworld” and “Bottle Garden” are like visits to partially holographic nature areas. “Green Corn Moongreen Corn Moon” feels like a pleasant twilit stroll through a farm, then gets blitzed by fractalized electronics in the middle. The following tracks are more string-based and pastoral, and “Green Corn” has frogs throughout its second half, while “Danse Des Crevettes” combines lush strings with acidic, crunchy electronics. “Cobwork” starts with gentle rainfall, then gains criss-crossing horns and synths, and also strings and guitars and bells, creating a half-synthetic patchwork. Finally, “Precita Morning” is a more celebratory fanfare, with gliding synths and horns as well as jazzy drums that start out laid-back and eventually get more excited and raucous as the music flutters up, turning into something akin to a hyper form of birdsong.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
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