Patrick Balthrop
Autopoetic
© 2007 Gears of Sand Recordings (842841038053)
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Gorgeous waves of ambient, microbeats
tracks
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notes
"Autopoetic, by new kid on the synthetic block Patrick Balthrop, is an album located on the more harmonious clines of a notional Kranky/12k interface. Its title denotes a system whose boundaries, behaviors, and power relations are continually maintained and redefined through a ‘self-making’ circular process which produces its own components; these in turn structure the entire system as a unity, maintaining its integrity and identity despite the constant flux of its dynamically changing components. Which definitional dsicourse seems to neatly summarize Balthrop’s method/process, though leaving its precise musicality unilluminated. This resides more in microsound than IDM, eschewing overt trap drum sounds or sampled breakage, preferring more subtle allusion to rhythmicity’ fluttering and fibrillating lower-end sonics in the Raster-Noton tradition of Nicolai (Alva Noto) and Bretschneider (Komet). Over these percussive elements Balthrop weaves a gentle glitchwork tapestry, with tuneful keyboard textures, never overstating or overstaying (11 tracks covering barely 37 minutes, the longest track coming in at 4:02). Some pieces such as ‘Throwaways’ and ‘The Night Rose featuring Sententia’ are a little too twee-pretty for their own good, though individual pieces tend to flow internally, seguing without much of a seam or tonal alteration, keeping to an effectively pared back palette. Best of all is the gorgeous end pair: ‘Bedbox,’ an object lesson in a small-is-beautiful approach to sonic architecture, whose textural delicacy somehow gets big on you without making any large gestures. Then an elegiac sad-happy closure with ‘Until We Meet Again.’ Autopoetics: microbeats, microsounds, and microsongs from under the new bedsit floorboards."
-Alan Lockett, e|i magazine (Audio Verite, August 2007)
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Patrick Balthrop uses real-time processing applications and customized software to produce electronic music. Unlike many of his Chicago House counterparts, Patrick constructs and assembles sounds between ten and one hundred milliseconds into microbeats. Balthrop's interactive, three-dimensional surround sound mixes and sound designs have been critically acclaimed. His songs have been placed in films, including most recently "The Regret", which will be heard at The Sundance Film Festival and the New York International Independent Film Festival. Patrick's software research has led to the development of performance based generative plug-ins, which through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and redefine the audio signals that produced them.