As you may know, I’m a big fan of Taylor Deupree’s 12k, that most fastidious of labels.  Obsessed always with the qualities of sound itself, its environment is a hermetic one populated only by the most minimal yet most fascinating of electronics.  The new release by UK-based artist Autistici keeps within their keenly-patrolled quality control thresholds.

Listening to Volume Objects, in which a selection of instantly recognisable found sounds are couched within sparse instrumentation and fragments of melody, my mind started to compose a narrative.  I imagined being taken to a prison in a hot country, with neon flickering, water dripping, aircon buzzing, rats scurrying, clock ticking.  I can hear my heart pounding.  Keys rattling in the lock herald an unwelcome visitation, I’m left howling in pain.  I flee, escape, catch a plane; exhausted, I slip into the deepest of sleeps.  Where is this prison?  Is it in my own head – the sounds make brilliant use of the cavernous space between my ears.  Is this just an episode of cult 1960s balloon-dodging Kafkarama The Prisoner, starring me as Number 6 – or should that be number 1, hmmmm?.  Is it all the medicine going to my head (mapsadaisical does not endorse combining Beechams Cold and Flu tablets with wine, unless you want to spend the rest of the evening clinging onto the edge of the world trying not to fall off).  For an album of such tiny sounds, it is most listenable, and rather arresting.

Listen to “Wire Cage for Tiny Birds” and “Heated Dust On A Sunlit Window”.  Get a copy, with another lovely Deupree cover, from the 12k shop.