Architectural Commentaries

by François Couture Released in 2002 on the New Zealand label CMR, Architectural Commentaries couples three new pieces by sound artist Marc Behrens with two of his earlier works. The three movements of the title track explore microscopic sounds and amplified silence. For "architectures," they give an impression of fragility but also irremediableness. Behrens' music exists -- period. It fills your listening space quietly but resolutely. "Architectural Commentary 1" is the strongest piece, maybe because it leaves its basic constituents (air, metal, nothing) more obvious and makes them interact in a more immediate way, expressing a sharper sense of design. The two other tracks lose some of this focus, even sounding improvised at times. "Quersumme RLW" was Behrens' contribution to Tulpas, a Ralf Wehowsky remix project from 1998 (the album was out of print by 2002). In the light of what preceded it, the piece sounds organic even though it consists of very quiet digital sounds. The 11-minute "Der Raum" was composed in 1992 as the soundtrack for Torsten Grosch's video by the same title. By far the noisiest and most kinetic piece on this CD, it shifts a number of times from near silence to post-industrial madness. This regression through time helps shed some light on the three Architectural Commentaries, although they remain sonic enigmas of appeal only to the most adventurous of listeners.