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STEPHAN WITTWER
STREAMS
GROB 320 CD

BY JOHN CRATCHLEY
(THE WIRE 212 OCTOBER 2001)

This is the Swiss guitarist's first solo album for Grob, though other work has appeared on both Intakt and FMP. The credits say, "music made with guitar and devices. Later on processed and modulated." The restructuring and assemblage work done on the eight compositions gives the album an 'after the event' feel, but this does not detract from the equally strong sense of an agenda fulfilled. The manipulation of sound, combined with Wittwer's guitar technique, is absolutely devoid of cliche. With an attention to aural detail borderIng the obsessive, he practices a constant development of mood that makes for intense listening.

The energy created through juxtapositions within the sonic depth of field is maintained by the element of surprise. Wittwer generates background collages of subterranean rumble, built out of myriad pulses and signals. These exquisite constructions allow time to acclimatise to their alien configurations. He will then precisely position a delicate acoustic guitar finger hammer on a detuned string in the sonic foreground, the dislocation and familiarity of which makes you re-evaluate the whole elaborate framework. Sounds are explored and given time to reveal their other, hidden selves, contained within their undertones and complementary resonances. This textural metamorphosis suddenly refines back to a purely struck ringing guitar note growing into a moment of sustained feedback. The effect is highly charged and leads to moments of singular purity created out of adulterated density. At one point, the clatter of fingers on strings grows to the intensity of a typing pool, highlighting Wittwer's ability to emphasise the mechanics of guitar playing, counterbalancing it with the dispossession of sound that the instrument can equally create: the identifiable and the abstract held in perfect tension. Only in the last piece, "Bounce", is there a recognisable sense of syncopation. The rest is all underlying current tugging at the pieces of sonic flotsam immersed in the soundpool.

<- Wittwer info