Keith Berry Sound Artist

THE EAR THAT WAS SOLD TO A FISH

release date april 2005

label: Crouton
format: cd packaged in a small kraft box filled with blue leaves
limited edition: 300

This is the place where film and mind intersect. An intricately detailed and mesmerizing follow-up to this London artist's release on trente oiseaux.

London composer Keith Berry's The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish is a complex, albeit soothing piece, stretching over nine tracks. The movement of the piece is akin to closing one's eyes while floating gently down a nightime river. But ironically, this slow pace demands quick attention, as the sound all around you passes you by. Fortunately, unlike a river experience, one gets the opportunity to discover additional nuances, that in themselves each open new worlds with repeated listening. Crouton is pleased to present this mind encompassing new work from one of the brightest electronic composers in the UK today. His previous work has been released on such labels as trente oiseaux, Authorized Version, and Twenty Hertz. This release is presented as a special hand-numbered and limited edition, packaged in a small kraft box

This is the third work I encounter from Keith Berry, following his CD on Trente Oiseaux (Vital Weekly 416) and Authorized Version (Vital Weekly 450). Berry studied a lot of philosophy - from Lao tzu to Nietzsche and from the I Ching to Wabi Sabi - after which he decided to set these ideas to music. Using just a computer and software, he creates some beautiful drone related music. I believe that the sources he uses are the usual field recordings, but on some of the pieces on this new work, I am led to think they might also be real instruments, at least in a couple of tracks. Usually Berry takes a minimum of sound information and expands just on that little bit of sound information. Stretching it, altering it, making multiple layers and what other tricks the computer has to offer. Maybe what Berry does is quite simple but it's hardly of importance (see also the review of Jonathan Coleclough and Lethe's new CD). A lot of things are simple and easy to make, but to make it stand out from the rest is where the real power of the music lies. And in these nine pieces on this CD, Berry shows that he can definetly join the ranks of Mirror, Ora, Monos and Coleclough. I guess it's something in the UK air that these people breath that makes them produce such wonderful, beautiful music.

Vital Weekly [Frans de Waard]

Perseverance, circumspection, specularity. Longsuffering renouncers should never expect to be rewarded with anything different from an additional repassage through their own voiceless doubts; just like followers will continue to hold their breath until the necessity of oxygen will finally clear their salt-burned eyes, consumers of juvenilia will always be linked to moments and events that don't exist anymore - and maybe they were fallacious in the first place. Then, your time to delineate a personality is up and of course you're gonna pay for it, but indefiniteness becomes an instant gratification for those needing to hide behind a mental shelter; yet, it's likely that sorrow will constantly be a faithful companion throughout the trip. Thus, consider "The ear that was sold to a fish" like an undespoiled retrieved drawing of the many and one personal projections generated during childhood's games, all gathered under an incommensurable shadow of heartbreaking awareness which won't stop swallowing the few remains of that time we believed abundant and now are crying about as mostly wasted.

Touching Extremes [Massimo Ricci]

Of all the artists I've learned of in the past year, few – or perhaps none – have intrigued me more than Keith Berry. Initially, the apparent minimalism and stillness of his music reminds the listener of his sometime Trente Oiseaux labelmates Bernard Günter and Steve Roden. Upon close listening, though, Berry's music isn't so minimal or still after all.

Berry's music is most notable for its textural fullness; The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish is only minimal in the limited sense in which nothing that happens ever begs, or even asks, for the listener's attention. Beyond that, Berry's music is very generous – the sounds are exquisitely chosen and placed, there are more of them than there initially seem to be, and although he uses repeating gestures, he doesn't usually base his music around them. Berry's music also sounds like it was created with the recording in mind; The Ear… sounds as good in headphones as, say, a late Labradford album.

The apparent stillness of The Ear… is just the absence of an aggressively pursued direction. Berry likes to say that his music is like drifting down a river (he released an album in 2003 called The Golden Boat), and his simile is apt. The music doesn't stay in the same place; it just sometimes seems that way because it doesn't seem as if anyone is too worried about where the boat ends up. It's directional, but it takes its time to get where it's going, and the travel from point A to point B is more

important than the points themselves.

Because of its textural richness, deliberate pacing and directionality, The Ear… will strike many listeners as evocative and cinematic, which sets Berry apart from many musicians who are otherwise reasonably close points of reference: Roden, Morton Feldman, and Michael Schumacher, for example.

Crouton is releasing The Ear… in a limited edition of 300, which is a shame – more people should hear it. If it becomes unavailable, you might find The Golden Boat or 2004's Buddha's Mile. They're all fairly similar aesthetically, but The Ear… is probably the eeriest of the three (pun not intended).

Dusted Magazine [Charlie Wilmoth]

As if ironically commenting on the size of the machine that produced it – a laptop about as large and heavy as a folded Sunday newspaper – much recent electronic music, from the subaquatic mysteries of irr. app. (ext.)'s Ozeanische Gefühle to the windswept Icelandic folk choirs of Akira Rabelais's Spellwauerynsherde, has explored vast reverberant space. London based sound artist Keith Berry came across Rabelais's ingenious software before discovering his music ("I was into Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies and Wabi Sabi, and his programs shifted what I was reading and feeling into the computer/software domain perfectly"). He used Rabelais's Argeiphöntes Lyre and Argeiphöntes Recalcitrance software to sculpt material culled from sources including Les Baxter exotica albums, high frequency test tones reworked to sound like insects, a creaking wooden chair and a bicycle wheel into the nine spacious, deceptively simple and hauntingly beautiful soundscapes that make up The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish, title courtesy of the Sufi poet Hafiz. It's Berry's most accomplished work to date, following on from his impressive 2003 debut The Golden Boat on Bernhard Günter's trente oiseaux imprint and last year's CD-R release Buddha's Mile.

Sufi poetry and Zen are important influences on Berry, who compares his working methods to the Japanese calligraphers who spend a whole day preparing brushes and paper then execute their drawings in a single burst of fast and inspired action, his goal being "to plant a little seed in the listener that given the right conditions could grow into something far

In case such a declaration matters in the grand scheme of things, The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish is my (Jim's) Record of The Year for 2005.

That said, there is a unique facet to Keith Berry's impressionistic masterpiece that I cannot fully enjoy. You see, I have a very limited sense of smell. I've always blamed it on my pyrotechnic stunts during my college days when I would light my paintings on fire; and as grandiosely stupid as this made me look, the sensorial failings of my nose is more the result of genetics than anything I could have done to it. So when I opened the box for the first time to Keith Berry's The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish, I got a small tingle as something perfumed and pleasant drifted from the contents of the box, which contained not only a CD and booklet but also a delicate pile of dyed flower petals. Those of you who are not sensorially damaged might be able to place the scent; but I simply cannot. Regardless, Berry (with the help of the fine folks at Crouton Records) engineered an amazing feat: an album with a fragrance.

For very obvious reasons, the smell-o-rama trick is not what attracts me to the record; it's the seductively restrained compositions for quiet flickerings, muffled rumbles, and whispered reverberations that truly captured my imagination. Berry defines his work through the teachings of Zen Buddhism and Sufi poetry, striving for an artform that could "unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that leads to enlightenment." In doing so, Berry begins with a series of unremarkable sounds which fall somewhere in the hushed white noise territories, possibly including the

Ambient bedeutet ja auch immer: auf im weitesten Sinne angenehme Weise die betroffene Umgebung beinahe unmerklich verändernd und sich nicht zwingend in den Vordergrund drängend auf den Hörer einzuwirken. Das hier ist keine Ambient-Musik. Dieses kleine Schmuckstück zieht einen vom ersten Augenblick an, lenkt die ganze Aufmerksamkeit auf sich. Es beginnt bei der ungewöhnlichen Verpackung: in einem kleinen Karton, bis oben hin gefüllt mit künstlich gefärbten blauen Blättern, befindet sich eine schwarze Papierhülle, darin die CD. Weiters ein Blatt Papier, mit poetischen Kommentaren zu jedem der neun Tracks. Die Musik selber: fantastisch. Sehr leise, aber durchaus nicht ruhig, ständig ist Bewegung vorhanden, eine Richtung nicht immer erkennbar. Die Grundstimmung ist etwas unheimlich, dunkel, irgendwie: unter Wasser. Kann aber bei Gelegenheit gerne euphorisch-symphonische Züge annehmen. Wenn das passiert, ist es eine Art 'lowercase-Euphorie', also: nur wenig überschwänglich, phasenweise vielleicht mit den erhebenden Tape-Loops von William Basinski vergleichbar. Keith Berry nimmt sich Zeit, um Details in den Vordergrund zu Fokussieren, großflächig innezuhalten, während sich der Rest der Musik unvorhersehbar, jedoch nicht ziellos weiter ausbreitet. Mittels Kopfhörern: Bewusstseinserweiternd.

Echoes-online.de [Tobias Bolt]

Architecte des microcosmes sonores, Keith Berry offre avec cet album une vue imprenable sur le versant «concret» et naturaliste du continent «ambient». Un travail d'orfèvre musical qui, comme rarement, concilie les notions de fluidité, de méticulosité et de dépouillement.

Familier des philosophies orientales, des mystiques soufis et des élans de plénitude de la pensée zen, le compositeur Keith Berry développe avec la même sensibilité complexe une approche musicale se diffusant comme des vapeurs d'encens dans une brume matinale ouatée. Loin de toute forme de surcharge, The Ear that Sold to a Fish se dévoile comme un jeu d'ondes subtiles, grossissant et se rétractant dans des empreintes sonores reptiliennes, aux douces rondeurs organiques. Fluide comme le fil d'une rivière, la musique de Keith Berry s'emploie à envelopper l'auditeur de ses atmosphères pénétrantes, microcosmes organiques mêlant minimalisme instrumental et bruits de matières amplifiées. Comme sur ses précédents travaux, publiés chez Twenty Hertz et sur le label de Bernard Günther, Trente Oiseaux, cet album symbolise une écoute replacée avec un soin méticuleux au coeur de la source sonore, une approche environnementale, envoûtante et résolument ambiante de la musique concrète, où jamais la matière ne vient s'effriter dans des "white noise" bruyants ou dans un chaos "dark-ambient" frontal. Dès lors, même aux limites de la rupture, percluse de marques de grésillement ou de silences fixants, la musique de Keith Berry reste étonnamment compacte et coulante, comme une nappe sensorielle dont

les nuances dépouillées s'accorderaient sur un rythme diffus dans une unité harmonique fascinante. De l'ambient-music qui coule de source en quelque sorte.

Octopus [Laurent Catala]

In September 2004, Keith Berry had politely made a request of the Helen Scarsdale Agency to listen to one of his recordings for consideration for future release through the Agency. Unfortunately due to the Agency being on working holiday in Australia, we were unable to get back in touch with Mr. Berry about the matter. While it is such a shame that we could not publish the recording in question, the good people at Crouton has enough sense to pick up from our failure and release Berry's remarkable album The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish. This marvellous construction of post-Feldman spaciousness and ghostly traces of somber melody make this one of the best records we have encountered in 2005. Handsomely packaged in a small cardboard box filled with perfumed and dyed petals. Truly delightful!

Helen Scarsdale [Jim Haynes]

" To a frog that's never left his pond the ocean seems like a gamble... " What initially drew my attention to this piece of music was the quote from Rumi on the inlay card ( the C.D also comes nestling on a bed of blue smally leaves and includes original photographic work by the artist. ) I found instant reassurance in his words as I am at the beginning of a great adventure myself, I am new to this city and don't really know what I am doing here, yet. "The movement of the piece is akin to closing one's eyes whilst floating down a nightmare river. This latest offering by the London composer has definitely retained a sense of movement and adventure, certainly in a mysterious place but not necessarily nightmarish, a train journey in warm grey oceans, perhaps. I found it very comforting though the repetitive nature of some of the pieces can be some what tedious at times but once involved again what you have is a wonderful visual experience.The title of the album stares up some lovely imagery and questions. The composer's use of subtle nuances and harmony throughout brings you to some conclusions. All in all it's a place worth a few visits.

Phosphor [Smm]

Drone music is a field that this humble writer had once believed to have completed its life cycle. But this release by Keith Berry dispels that notion, showing the possibilities of how one can use simple means to achieve absolutely remarkable results. Beyond the objets d'art of the sort that Crouton is fast building a rep for (a tan, keepsake-size cardboard box, within which the disc and booklet rest on a bed of scented green leaves, cues the very leaves floating in the boxtop's tea cup), the listener is taken on a journey of very powerful soundworlds, all related to a subtlety of movement, with total care given to each tone. As far as emotional impact is concerned, this style of slow intensity calls to mind the work of fellow Englishman and turntable texture-sculpter Philip Jeck. Berry seems to give great importance to the frequencies range of sounds he uses. A large portion of a given track may be built from extremely low frequencies but occasionally a well-tuned, very high-register chirp will interfere, initiating a sudden moment of suspense. In its own marginal way, this is very "rhythmic" music, not on the scale at which we normally judge rhythms to occur but on a very large scale, the way tectonic plates might shudder along a faultline, rubbing gigantically yet slowly under the earth's surface.

e/i [Roddy Schrock]

This is sound artist Keith Berry's third CD, following on from The Golden Boat (trente oiseaux, 2003) and Buddha's Mile (Authorized Version, 2004), both of which the music press garlanded with praise. Berry works with what are now, since the invention of the sampler and the ascendancy of the laptop computer as a sound forge, familiar combinations of material - fragments of instrumental sound, field recordings, and his own electronics and treatments. Hundreds if not thousands of composers and improvisers are doing almost exactly the same thing, but barely a score of them have produced works that are worth revisiting. Berry can definitely be numbered among the successes.

Though the way he uses repetition and permutation is perhaps not too far removed from how Michael J Schumacher and Steve Roden work, his music sounds as little like theirs as they sound like each other. The computational indeterminacy (if that isn't a contradiction in terms, despite being literally correct) of Schumacher's ongoing series of Room Pieces, and Roden's more flowing, improvisatory mode of presentation, use time as a key determinant in the structure of the music, but in very different ways. Berry's approach to time-structure is to present the music as a series of evolutionary fits and starts, mimicking the way successive generations of humans have to relearn, to at least some degree, the history of music before finding a way of adding to it. So material on track two reiterates, with subtle changes, some of the material from track one, and new material is added; track three reiterates some of the material

from tracks two and one (though perhaps less of the latter), then adds to it; etcetera. It gives the music an ever-evolving but readily comprehensible structure, so comprehensible in fact that you soon cease to be conscious of it and end up focusing solely on the graceful way the music unfolds (which sounds especially good on headphones, by the way). As in almost all of Morton Feldman's mature compositions, the material Berry uses may intentionally be limited in quantity and scope, but what's there is deployed in such a skilful manner that the possibilities are never exhausted and what ensues is enchantment rather than tedium. One shouldn't overplay the Feldman card, though; his and Berry's musics have little else in common. Other key factors that have influenced his work are Argeiphontes Lyre and Argeiphontes Recalcitrance (software programmes designed by Akira Rabelais), Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies (which can be accessed on Berry's website: www.inbetweensilence.com), and Zen. The last of these is apparent from the titles of his CDs alone. The Ear . . . is drawn from the work of the Sufi poet Hafiz, and it concerns "a boy who couldn't travel far so in his mind sells his ear to a fish and his eye to a bird". Massimo Ricci has written a set of nine rather splendid little prose-poems for Berry, and these comprise the titles of the pieces on the CD. The CD and the poems are housed in a cardboard box together with a windfall of blue aromatic leaves. On the lid of the box there's a photograph of a fish swimming in a coffee cup; leaves dapple the water's surface. Everything connects up - title, music, poems, packaging; such close attention to detail is rare in this slapdash, makeshift world. That

Keith Berry est un personnage à part, un artiste qui compose sa musique comme il vit, influencé par quelques penseurs, poètes, le tout saupoudré de philosophie et pratiques orientales telles que le I Ching. Sa musique est ainsi, douce, contemplative, et comme les haikus, raconte beaucoup de choses en peu de notes. Adepte d'un minimalisme complexe, Keith Berry nous offre ici une suite à The Golden Boat, son précédent album paru sur Trente Oiseaux, le label de Bernhard Günter, largement consacré aux oeuvres minimales.

Il y a peu de différences entre chacune de ces pièces ou, pour être plus précis, peu de différence entre un morceau et le suivant, mais au fil des neufs pièces qui le composent, une lente évolution se poursuit au cours de cet album.
On commence par des drones lancinants, sortes de nappes glacées et envoûtantes, parsemées de quelques bruitages épars, discrets, comme des objets qui roulent sur le sol, des cliquetis, sifflements ultra-aigus, le tout concourant à créer une ambiance à la fois apaisée, sereine, mais inquiétante car habitée. Les drones et nappes se superposent sur le deuxième morceau, gagnant en profondeur, les bruitages nous font penser à une usine dans le lointain, et les grésillements frétillants forment bientôt des chants d'insectes. Les bruitages sont alors plus présents, plus denses, les drones subissent des variations un peu plus importantes, et les ambiances s'enchaînent, aux insectes des champs font suite les clapotis de l'eau, puis les crépitements d'un feu, avec toujours cette même structure mouvante en guise de squelette, ce

même mélange de drones et nappes acoustiques avec des micro-bruitages électroniques.

A mi-parcours les nappes ébauchent une mélodie, et ce qui semble être une corde de contrebasse pincée ouvre de nouvelles perspectives. Elle répond aux autres bruitages, côtoie des artefacts numériques, des chocs métalliques. Un moyen de préparer le septième morceau avec ce qui semble être un instrument traditionnel à cordes pincées, produisant une lente mélodie. On reste dans le domaine de la contemplation, et ce qui débutait un peu comme un album de Biosphere se trouve ici comparable à une production de Stephan Micus, ambient-world acoustique qui trouve son pendant néo-classique sur l'avant-dernier titre de l'album, au piano.
Sur le dernier morceau, on retrouve un peu tous les éléments qui composent le disque, de manière assez organisée, et toujours la même finesse, la même subtilité dans l'intégration d'éléments électroniques sans concession sur une musique plus acoustique et apaisée. Un mélange surprenant mais à l'origine de toute la richesse de la musique de Keith Berry.

Un disque que le fans de Biosphere doivent se procurer de toute urgence (car limité à 300 exemplaires), tout comme les amateurs de productions ambient et minimales.

etherREAL [Fabrice Allard]

Véritablement noyé dans la sphère littéraire, à l'image du poisson qui orne sa pochette, Keith Berry à nourri sa culture et sa musique aux captivants écrits d'Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castenada, Lao Tzu ou Nietzsche , sustentant aussi sa démarche musicale de l'esthétique des poèmes Sufi de Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, Jala Al-din Rumi ou de la philosophie Wabi Sabi, Zen, Compositeur électronique Anglais, Keith Berry a forgé son habilité, sa sensibilité et son savoir -faire sur des labels tels que trente Oiseaux, Authorized Version ou Twenty Hertz. C'est ici Crouton , label qui a contribué à l'essor d'artistes et collectifs tels que Collection of colonies of bees, ou Jon Mueller qui met ici l'accent sur ce jeune musicien d'outre-manche S'appuyant sur des softwares similaires à certains musiciens contemporains (Akira Rabelais) Il développe une musique planante, atmosphérique et ambianteS.. De cet amour pour la littérature, il aura transposé cet appétit pour la perception profonde de chaque chose, où l'ordonnancement des sons, comme celui des mots répond à une logique de sens. Une musique intelligente et subtile, réfléchie et spontanée de laquelle émane une belle fragilité extrême-orientale. L'usage d'instruments japonais n'étant sans doute pas étranger à l'affaireS Relaxant et posé.

Jade

Keith Berry plaadil on pikkade helidega ambient, mille kaugest sügavusest näib kostvat pehmet krõbinat või kõlksumist, siin-seal lisavad närvilisust teravad ja kõrged toonid. Kindlasti on see muusika, mis tõuseb paremini esile süvenenud kuulamisel, et, nagu artist ise soovib, "päästa kuulaja vaimus valla valgustusele viivad mehhanismid". Viimane küll sedapuhku ei õnnestunud (kahtlustan, et mind takistasid need kõrged pininad). See on ses mõttes haruldase tekstuuriga plaat, et miski, mis kõlab, nagu ta seal olema ei peaks, on seal ikka, enesestmõistetavalt ja jälle, mõjudes samavõrra tehnilise defekti kui kompositsioonilise elemendina. Teose kompositsioon põhineb vahelduvate helide blokkidel, mudel töötab ühelt poolt irregulaarse uneluse ja kompositsioonilise aegluse ning teisalt kõlalise intensiivsuse ja võõrapärase äratuse rütmil. Plaadi lõpus toimub kaks muutust: esmalt ilmuvad rauged ja lagunenud idamaise kõlaga helid, seejärel (esimest korda albumil) mõneks ajaks diskreetne rütm, misjärel kogu plaat suubub taas vaikse raginaga eikuhugi.

Muusika [Erkki Luuk]

Housed within a small cardboard box filled with blue aromatic leaves, adorned by the composer's photographic work, and further complemented by nine short poems by Massimo Ricci (the source for the titles of the CD's nine pieces), Keith Berry's The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish (derived from the Sufi poet Hafiz, the title concerns "a boy who couldn't travel far so in his mind sells his ear to a fish and his eye to a bird") is presented so arrestingly, one fears the music on the London composer's third recording might suffer by comparison. Such fears are immediately allayed by the nuanced caliber of its ghostly contents, though that won't surprise listeners familiar with past Berry recordings like The Golden Boat (Trente Oiseaux, 2003) and Buddha's Mile (Authorized Version, 2004). There's a natural temptation to group him with artists like Bernard Günter, Steve Roden (both also affiliated with Trente Oiseaux), and Morton Feldman but Berry 's work largely eschews microsound minimalism for development-understated and incremental, admittedly-and textural richness.

Working with Akira Rabelais' software programs Argeiphontes Lyre & Argeiphontes Recalcitrance, field elements, and a large array of textures, Berry 's album unfurls quietly, sometimes nearly below the threshold of audibility, with repeating sounds intensifying as each piece builds on the one before. After faint rumblings, droning washes, and insect chatter quietly inaugurate the album in "The Sun Rays of Another Pale Afternoon," "Cars Keep Passing By," for example, resurrects its material and then ever so subtly elaborates upon it with tonal glimmers

that hint at an elusive melody. In the haunted "Can You Elevate Yourself," phantom orchestral sounds loop in the background, almost smothered by crusty ripples of gouged vinyl, while "Knelt Over the Water" exudes the ritualistic aura of a Noh play. One becomes so attuned to the album's restrained presentation that when the pluck of an acoustic bass and a koto-like twang appear in "Fuscous Presages Don't Help" and "Knelt Over the Water" respectively, the moments almost startle. Though Berry himself likens his music to the experience of drifting down a river, a better analogue might be to the blossoming of a flower in slow-motion.

Textura

Der Waschzettel preist diesen Londoner Komponisten, dessen dröhnminimalistisches (Evre bisher auf Trente Oiseaux (The Golden Boat, 2003), Authorized Version und Twenty Hertz erschienen ist, als jemanden, der mit Huxley, Castaneda, Lao Tse und Nietzsche per Du, der in Sufismus, Wabi-Sabi und I Ging eingeweiht ist und nur noch auf die Akira Rabelais′schen Softwareprogramme Argeiphontes Lyre & Argeiphontes Recalcitrance wartete, um nun mit eigenem Magischen Sound-Realismus den Schleier der Maya zu durchdringen. Berry versteht seine sanften und flach gewellten Soundblocks als Koans, die zwar nicht die Erleuchtung selbst bedeuten, aber als Katalysatoren fungieren könnten, als Schlüssel für die Pforten der Wahrnehmung. Diese pure und explizite Esoterik und Audiognosis materialisiert sich in sehr subtilen Dröhn- und Knistermikrophonien, Klängen die sich auf Schwingen dahin bewegen und dabei die Luft verwirbeln und mit lnsektenbeinchen feines Sandkorngeriesel lostreten. Und nach zwanzig Minuten vollster Konzentration mit geschlossenen Augen spüre ich, von Vögelchen umpiepst und während eine Koto plonkt, tatsächlich, wie der Schlüsselbart einrastet. Die Erleuchtung nähert sich mir in Gestalt von... Nietzsche?! Unterm Arm hat er seine kaputte Schreibmachine geklemmt, am Schnauzer kleben noch Reste seines geliebten Gelati und er drückt mir einen Zettel in die Hand, lässig und routiniert wie ein Pizzabote aus dem Jenseits. lch entfalte ihn und lese - ver - dammt, wer soll denn dieses Gekrakel entziffern? ...anfangen, über eine komische Lösung nachzudenken"???

One of two newish releases by this droning London-based minimal fellow. Sadly this one's a bit on the dull side; seems to comprise no more then a series of very forgettable, and very similar, short ambient pieces, made from slow and vague synth-generated scapes. The only small saving grace is the addition of some extremely subtle sound effects, so low in the mix as to be almost indiscernible, but vaguely suggestive of something watery (perhaps subliminally). Indeed, the intention seems to be to evoke the experience of 'closing one's eyes while floating gently down a nighttime river'. Perhaps some tracks also allude to episodes in the life of said fish, and when interpreted in this way it does convey a fine sense of peace and loneliness, as though exploring a marine world or a deserted island, all alone. Not much more than that though. Berry is no lightweight; he's immersed himself in Zen, Sufi poetry, Oriental and Western philosophy, and even the i Ching. He's trying hard to find a way to work these intellectual profundities into the hard drive of his Apple Mac, and create blocks of electronic sound that function like zen koans, in such ways as to 'unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment.' Despite this, I still feel there may be a problem with depth of content, and not enough going on musically or intellectually to fully engage you. However, I intend to prove myself wrong on this account, and will continue to listen to Berry's work. Arrives packaged in a box with tea leaves.

The Sound Projector [Ed Pinsent]

Berry tends to state that his music is like drifting down a river, and indeed this is easy to see — his rich, texturally full movements ripple like minute waves that reflect the sun's rays in ever-changing shapes, caress them for a moment, and finally carry them in their bosom down underneath nuanced blocks of sound.

Neumu [Max Schaefer]

Keith Berry's earlier works were as still as a coy pond, but this effort is generous in its textural fullness. That being said, he's made mention that his music is like drifting down a river - a statement which still applies. With samples and field recordings in hand, these compositions don't ask for anything, but provide a rich weave of peculiar, nuanced blocks of sound.

Lost At Sea [Max Schaefer]

Berry's delicate, zen-influenced aural structures have previously been released on Trente Oiseaux, Authorised Version and Twenty Hertz. This release for Crouton comprises one piece indexed into 9 shorter pieces. It's a delight to listen to and immerse oneself in. Gentle drones hang in the air, punctuated by insect-like high-frequency sounds and movements whilst later the entrance of strings and a piano add yet more layers. A recommended addition to his catalogue of works.

Adverse Effect [David Wells]