Austin-based Quiet Design delivered a brand new release in early 2008: the new album by lowercase sound pioneer (and fellow Austinite) Josh Russell (his fourth release to date).
Russell's approach to sound mirrors his academic background in microscopy research. He zooms into the components, spirals down to the primary element-level substratus and turns the focus dial to reveal what goes unnoticed. Then he builds around that, making it the primary core of a new composition. In doing so he creates a broad universe of low pressure synthetic veils that hover and flutter over pulsating organic patterns in the same way that thick shades of oil colors would be layered over background textures on a Thomas Crown affair-like canvas, revealing new shapes underneath the ones you are currently paying attention to. It comes as no surprise to me that Russell is also a painter (which I found out from his website after I wrote this review). In a way, "Sink" is a very visual record, a very visionary record, a sonic translation of multi-pattern and multi-layer micro-cosmos of slowly modulating sines and throbbing bubbles of light. You might think of it as a dilated and liquified glitch electronica record in which the glitches have been replaced by stretched snapshots of the universe the glitch came from.