Neither of these decorated artists need any introduction, and neither does Drainage, as it turns out; part one immediately kicks things off with a web of supercharged concrète that consistently highlights both Meirino’s trademark intensity and Noetinger’s virtuosic tape technique. This isn’t the first time they’ve worked together—back in 2012, Noetinger commissioned “Techniques of Self-Destruction” for that year’s l’Audible Festival in Paris, and then much more recently the two contributed remixes to the Lingua Corrente Reworks tape compilation and released a 2020 trio live recording with Antoine Chessex as Maiandros—but it is their first duo meeting, and thus the stamp of quality ensured by each is doubled up. Those same stamps guarantee that this won’t sound quite like anything either artist has done so far, because from Additive Manufacturing and The Blind Match to Genève / Paris and La Cave des Etendards, both allow for their approaches and ideas to be shaped by their collaborator in order to generate the most singular results possible. This is absolutely the case here; Drainage operates via a musical language built from scratch, one that mobilizes processed glitches, emf interference, and other razor-sharp microsounds in a sonic sandstorm beset by lengthier samples and field recordings. Though the overall sound is a futuristic one, made possible by the more than sixty years concrete music has existed, plenty of homage is paid to the deepest roots of the tradition: fleeting theatrical audiodramas in part three, the barrage of Henry-esque creaking wood at the end of part five. The level of detail and totality of vision at work here are a wonder to behold.
Noise Not Music 