Quiet Barrier (2011) [FLAC]

Download includes PDF of original album artwork.

The formation of a different language takes place on Quiet Barrier: flickering rhythms, receding walls of electronic sound, and warped melodic figures occupy the space where words and terminology once stood. It’s a process that Brooklyn-based Billy Gomberg has inhabited before with releases on such labels as Experimedia, and/OAR, and The Land Of. Here, with synthesizers and custom digital processing, Gomberg arrives at a complex album of shifting tones, kaleidoscopic hues, and crackling debris that flows with a clear, exacting vision.

Though wholly electronic in execution, Quiet Barrier is not designed, sequenced, or digitally overwrought. It is music that is played and constructed in real-time, relying on a moment to moment interaction between musician and instrument. Such an approach explains in part why Quiet Barrier unfolds with an unmitigated motion, propelling itself forward in a linear manner. The outcome, like any good narrative, is a sound that can’t be rushed or interrupted, only followed and absorbed. Quiet Barrier follows the 2009 collaboration with Offthesky, Flyover Sound, which was nominated for the Paris-based Qwartz electronic music award in experimentation and research.

originally released September 21, 2011 on Rest + Noise

synthesizers, software, recording: Billy Gomberg
found slides: Gill Arno