Melchior’s got the sneaky freaky deeky goin’ on. “Nothin’ to see / Hear, folks,” well, no gimmicks at least. These are tracks, not tricks. Either by accident or through some deep, machinic symbiosis, the shuffle function on my pod selected two tracks after listening to this that contextualise it nicely, Luomo’s “Synkro” and Portable’s “Liquid Crystal Display”—and just as with those tracks there’s the sense that both of Melchior’s extensive workouts need their enormous palette to work out and work through the combinations of grooves. Both “Different Places” and “The Phantom” are extended excursions, and they take their time leading the willing through the fullness of their landscapes before returning to where they began. The A starts with a moody, looped melody that blues the vocal refrain “I get lonely in different places,” but then the track seems to leave the thought, rambling into twinkle-toed terrain characterized by a nice descending bassline, squiggling/malfunctioning noises and a whole lotta repetitions. You get so lost in listening that by the time the “lonely” returns, you wonder where you’ve been. To the unattenuated ear, this is the quintessence of “the dreaded minimal,” uneventful music that goes nowhere. But there’s no muddling, or even meandering involved. Tell your ears to shut up and listen, and maybe they’ll hear.

Perlon / PERL 58
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[Peter Chambers]