Radian, a trio from Vienna, creates music that plays with your senseof aural identification and aural distance. It goes in hard for littlesounds we make when we’re not quite yet “making music”: the tiniestflop and swish of wire brushes on a drum-head, the quick pop of aplug entering a socket or a circuit being switched, the sound of afinger depressing a computer key.
On Chimeric, its fifth album,those little noises pan across the speakers or create a compoundrhythm, arranged by post-editing into elegant, complex syncopation,each portion of the rhythmic cycle expressed with different volume orcompression or room tone. Since the band’s beginnings, the timbre, shape and resonance of Martin Brandlmayr’s drums have been its trademark. (He’s awonder: a drummer with a beautiful sound and feel who pushes backagainst his own virtuosity.) Those human touches, his perfectlytimed, rhythm-conscious strokes and rustles, are surrounded by allkinds of other incidental noises, both handmade and digital.
In cooperation with Austrian Cultural Forum Prague.