Reviews:

(Vital Weekly) Label boss Bryan Day works with Jay Kreimer as Seeded Plain. The day is foremost a sculpture of instruments, boxes, strings, springs and metal, and he improvises with them. A long time ago, I reviewed a solo release of Kreimer (Vital Weekly 782), and he's more of a percussion player. Seeded Plain has existed for some fifteen years now, and I reviewed two of their releases before (Vital Weekly 662 and 763), also a long time ago, so I am a bit blank here. I don't know if there was a long gap in these men playing again or if there was no release (that I received). One short and three long pieces might be too long, clocking in at close to an hour. Seeded Plain's music isn't easy to digest, being a very densely orchestrated mixture of metallic percussion, bowed strings and other electro-acoustic music. It is very collage-like, even when there isn't much through lay and hard edits—more a continuous, subconscious stream of sounds. The music was recorded during Kreimer's Fulbright fellowship in India, so the pieces are named after the location where they performed. I like all four pieces, but especially the last one, 'Hyderabad Two', which contains overtone/throat singing and some subdued electronics, creating quite a different atmosphere. The short opening reminded me of Dome. 'Hyderabad One' and 'Bangalore' are more conventional pieces of improvised electro-acoustic music and not too different, so if one went, the album would be stronger with three variations in approach—still a fine album, of course. - Frans de Waard