For the most part, “range” is overrated. An artist’s body of work is just as impressive when it’s laser-focused as when it’s eclectic. In the singular case of John Collins McCormick, however, focus and eclecticism aren’t different things at all. Each radically unique release he puts out simply documents a new approach to the same open-minded exploration of sound itself. Even then, you’d be hard pressed to find two entries in his discography more contrastive than Your Money Your Life and For Other 1, 2, 3, 4 (both of which, fittingly, dropped on the same day). The former, comprising a single half-hour piece, is McCormick’s most direct invocation of harsh noise tropes; Finally Tall Enough for My Age, I Grew Deeper from last year’s tape batch certainly made use of caustic textures, but it resided more in the area of the passive detachment of data sonification. This, on the other hand, is carefully composed, emotional and human and even warm despite its obvious digital origins. Not unlike Veidrik’s HAZARDAJ, software output is just the paint in the palette, so the actual proceedings are loose and gestural—I could see even the analog purists enjoying this. McCormick anchors his crackling distortion swarms with a sighing tension-and-release structure and tactile snippets, the maelstrom culminating in a stripped-down coda.
For Other is the calm it leaves behind, a suite of four tracks “for adding to a quiet room—they pair well with refrigerators or AC units or buzzing lamps or open windows.” The material is so subtle that it is often superseded by the listener’s environment, which of course is kind of the point. Wandelweiser comparisons are obvious, but For Other only evokes the least stuffy, most organic material: Young Person’s Guide; Weites Land, Tiefe Zeit; etc. Sukora comes to mind as well. Imperfect parallels, though, because here the spotlight is arguably more on the external soundscapes the recordings frame than it is on the recordings themselves. The temptation to crank the volume is still strong; if you do so, you’ll find the same level of immersive detail as its much louder counterpart. Is that cheating? Who cares—your money, your life.
Speaking of money, both beautifully handmade gatefold CD-Rs are available as a batch deal for $15. A steal.
Noise Not Music 