Fluxion
Vibrant Forms
[Chain Reaction]
Rating: 8.2
By some accident of temporal distortion, Vibrant Forms was reviewed
in the 1807 edition of Hutton Mathematical Course (vol. II. p. 279). The
reviewer, Dr. Hutton, remarked that "the direct method consists in
finding the fluxion of any proposed fluent or flowing quantity; and the
inverse method, which consists in finding the fluent of any proposed
fluxion."
Now it seems to me that Hutton's review is a bit crap. But I excuse the
old chap, because he only had the CD, and not a player. He was missing
the key ingredient to getting it right! It's no wonder that Hutton
considered that Fluxion's perilously dub- inflected heroin house sound
was some "flowing quality" as he waved the shiny surface around on the
florid wallpaper of his smoking room.
I, however, have both required elements with which to appreciate
Vibrant Forms, and appreciate it I truly do. This disc is the
seventh wave in Chain Reaction's multi- layered plan to scintillate the
world. Though you'd find this disc in the "Dance" or "Club" section of
your local Sam Goody (some hope!), you'd be hard pressed to dance to it.
Fluxion (or K. Soublis as he's known to his chums) has included all the
right stuff that would make for a good time, four- to- the- floor, hands-
in- the- air choon. However, he's caked his vibrating wonders in menhir-
heavy blocks of white noise, dirt, and paranoia- inducing echoes. This
crushing sound is the trademark of Chain Reaction.
And, by jolly, it works a treat! It's as though each track is irradiating
giga- Curies of harmful rays that'll surely rearrange brain tissue at
sub- molecular levels. At the same time, other noises Fluxion generates
are like the infinitesimally small fall- out from a faster- than- light
atomic particle zapping through the Earth's crust on its non- stop
journey towards the boundaries of time, space, and God Himself! Oh,
yes!
Aside from the staggering analogies that I can't stop myself from
drawing, Vibrant Forms is fascinating because Fluxion (like his
Chain Reaction peers) doesn't generate pioneering sounds of Out There
like, say, David Kristian, Low Res, or Sugar Ray do. Fluxion, the egoless
ascetic, makes use of sonic, trans- uranic pollutants such as the sounds
that a fluffed up needle makes, or the cracks and pops endemic to
listening to music on vinyl-- these discrete micro- sounds Fluxion dapples
upon the megalithic blocks of caressed white noise. This approach points
to only one intent: Fluxion is a bag person. He raids the garbage sack
of techno for stuff other musicians would clean up in Cubase or with
Sound Tools. And he locks these rhythmic units and his smooth curved
white noise into loops that spin until reaching steady state bliss.
The word "hypnotic" barely scratches the surface of the effect he creates!
It's a seventy- minute glance into the piezoelectric microcosmic splendor
of a grain of filthy road salt. I have divined the proposed fluent of this
fluxion and it truly is vibrant.
-Paul Cooper