neptune reviews
"Like Tod Dockstader, Connecticut-based Todd Merrell is a sound
explorer who has been processing radio frequencies and spectral
communications from shortwave radios and transforming them into
soundscapes since 1978. Neptune was recorded in real time with no
overdubs and no post-production in two-track, direct to DAT with
Merrell using only a single band shortwave receiver, a loop sampler,
delay and reverb effects processor and mixer. Each of the eight tracks
are devoted to one of Neptune's 13 moons (the five most recently
discovered have yet to be named). While the eighth planet from the Sun
is one of the gaseous planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus), whose
composition is made up of ice, rock, helium and hydrogen, and whose
winds reach up to 200 kms/hr, astronomers know little about these
moons. This leaves the door wide open for Merrell to imagine what the
sounds on and surrounding these moons would be. Too often when the
solar system is evoked in music, it is often depicted in
quasi-mystical terms with the music falling into cliched
psychedelia. Merrell avoids this pitfall and wisely assumes that the
moons have some of the same characteristics of their parent planet. So
that while Merrell's immersive drone-based soundscapes are definitely
celestial, they are equally forbidding; gaseous in shape with a
temperature that is glacially cold and an omnisciently thick,
turbulent, distant roar, something like being trapped in one of
Neptune's howling wind storms. Sometimes this ghostly audio manifests
as a massive, swirling echo chamber as on "Thalassa" and "Larissa" or
a gigantic bass tone on "Galatea" or more benignly as on the piercing,
ringing loops of "Naiad" and "Despina". Only "Proteus" and "Nereid"
break from the template, the former dominated by a granular buzzing
static that comes close to Francisco Lopez's abrasive fissures of
sound, the latter employing the microtonal static as a broken rhythm
to the companion staccato overtones, as if the Raster-Noton camp had
decided to embrace the dark ambience of Robert Rich. Of course, if
your source material is radiophonic transmissions, you're bound to
tune into some human voices and on "Neptune" they come in two forms,
either as barely perceptible echoing voices struggling to be heard
amidst the murky waveforms on "Thalassa" or as a washed out angelic
choir that forms the basis for "Triton". This, despite the fact, that
humanity's first up close contact with Neptune was through the photos
relayed by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989. Neptune is a compelling
and occasionally harrowing celebration of this distant blue-colored
orb."
— Richard Moule, Signal To Noise (Winter, 2007)
"As befitting an album named after a distant planet and with its
individual tracks named after said planet's moons, Neptune begins with
a dark, evocative chill very much in keeping with many of the best
practitioners of the danker side of ambience -- this isn't so much a
healing wash of sound as a sense of desolate, empty landscapes under a
coal-black sky. But "Naiad" isn't the album in miniature, as Todd
Merrell explores various shades of murk and disorienting gloom
throughout the album. Rather than being entirely calm to the point of
death, activity crops up in careful ways -- the seemingly random,
heavily echoed blips and burps on "Galatea" set against the absolute
zero of the background wash, the slow, steady rhythm of "Triton,"
feeling like an endless, regular but syncopated pulse through
gauze. Some pieces definitely have the feeling of alien broadcasts -- consider the distorted, bubbling flow of what sounds like language of some form or another on "Thalassa," rising out of infinite depths (all the more appropriate given the nautical imagery applied to the planet and its moons). The concluding "Nereid" provides a fine counterbalance to the opening "Naiad," sounding even more like a Thomas Koner piece lost somewhere in the outer cosmos -- further living up to the inspiration for the album as a whole." 3.5 stars
— Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
"Admittedly, there are more than a handful of things about this
recording that emit new-agey warning signals. The cover kinda screams
ECM, 1978, the title along with the track names (eight of Neptunes
moons) and, on a superficial level, even the music. But at least that
last bit is misleading. Merrell sources short-wave emissions from the
electro-magnetosphere, makes minimal adjustments or enhancements,
mostly involving loops and reverb, and presents the results as thick,
sometimes smooth, sometimes gnarly slabs of hum n static. If, after
all is said and done, it tends more toward the tonally agreeable and
if the reverb is ladled on a tad heavily for my taste, I can see the
music having wide appeal for people who enjoy (for example) Pauline
Oliveros drone work or the long string music of Ellen Fullman.
Merrell has also worked with Francisco Lopez and you can hear a
certain affinity, particularly if you pump up the volume a few
notches. In some pieces, such as Larissa, you get toward a similar
cavernous massiveness of sonic space; Lopez may seek to place you
inside a jet engine but Merrell wants to situate you directly in line
with a solar flare. A track like this comes closest to abandoning any
traditional musical elements and is most successful, to these ears, as
a pure, heady chunk of sonics. One can easily imagine, given a strong
enough sound system, how immersive this music could be in live
performance. The following cut, Proteus, takes things a step further
by injecting some rude splats of static into the mix, creating an even
grainier, less cloying stew. Nereid, the final piece here, breaks
formation with the others, initially discarding the drone-wash and
utilizing a series of semi-regular pulses, dusted with static and
navigating between sine-like tones at various aural distances though
eventually it too settles into the ether. Its an intriguing tack,
recalling (of all things) recordings like Hancock's Sextant, pared and
reduced but retaining a vestige of funk.
As mentioned above, Neptune is likely to be right up the alley for
those already attuned with Oliveros and associated musicians, less so
for the noisier inclined."
— Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen (August, 2006)
"Shortwave radio sounds have been attractive to electronic music
composers since John Cage twiddled the dials for his Imaginary
Landscapes and Karlheinz Stockhausen sought alien communication in the
music of the spheres. More recently, John Duncan has used shortwave
sounds extensively in his recent experimental work. The range of
sounds that come from the deep unknown connects musicians with
something larger than themselves, something from Out There (like
Mulders Truth). Connecticut composer Todd Merrell has used shortwaves
in his work for many years, and his spirit on Neptune is closer to
Duncan than Stockhausen, especially to Duncan's more ambient works
like
Phantom Broadcast.
Neptune is the second album released in the Australian label Dreamland
Recordings projected set of nine Planetary Series albums. Each of the
eight tracks (corresponding to Neptunes named satellites) was composed
in real-time, solo, with no overdubs or post-production. Merrell used
only a short wave receiver, a loop sampler, a couple of effects and a
mixer. Several tracks are deep ambient drones that wouldnt be out of
place on Oophois Umbra label, but on Thalassa and Galatea the voices
from the original source transmissions are still in evidence, albeit
heavily processed. Proteus is the noisiest piece, with a continuous
buzzing underlying the sustained drones. The longest track, Nereid,
has a repeating rhythmic ostinato with slow melodic lines over a
low-fidelity background noise like tape hiss.
Merrell succeeds in getting a variety of sounds from his material,
with each track like a short vignette of messages from deep space. At
low volumes, Neptune is suitable for late-night drifting, but there is
a lot of detail for headphone listeners."
— Caleb Deupree, Ambient Visions (December, 2006)
"Taking his inspiration from the isolationist music of Thomas Koner or
the more recent works
of Biosphere, Merrell crafts a dark, empty space in which nothing
seems to live. Like a cold, glacier wind coming out of your speakers,
with small events happening, but that never work their way
upfront. Everything seems to be happening in a low key mode. Silent
and tranquil, but ever so dark that 'new age' isn't a term that even
comes closely to this. Great stuff..."
— Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly #525
