Bionulor, Bionulor (CDR Etalabel)

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Around the edge of this disc runs the scaly body of the Ouroboros, the classic symbol of the snake biting its own tail, which has commonly been interpreted down through the ages as standing for renewal. Of life and the stuff of which it is made.

As Bionulor, Sebastian Banaszczyk claims to be running a recycling station, with each of the eight pieces presented on his debut recording created out of the manipulation of a single, presumably abandoned sound source. The brown construction paper cover features woodcuts of alchemical retorts or pre-modern industrial processes, and the basis of the first track, ”NCHR.01”, certainly evokes the era, the single stroke of what might be a viola da gamba being repeated and treated over and over again, creating its own, remarkably contemporary roundelay.

Banaszczyk harvests his source sounds from old tape, vinyl and archival recordings and calls them ”musical waste”, which seems a disservice to the original efforts, especially since one of his intents is to have a new look at late Medieval and Renaissance music.

It is mostly lovely. You feel like you are turning it around in your hands examining every side of every sound, which also seems to reflect the manner in which Banaszczyk made them in the first place. Digressions into light chaos like ”PVN” or attention deficit like "VLZ" still fit into the strange sorcerer´s workshop atmosphere of the whole album.

And then there are times when the alchemist has truly succeeded in turning base metal into gold, like the absolutely gorgous moment when the acoustics in which the loop that is the centrepiece of ”L.FLL” suddenly changes and opens up a whole new world.

It is an album made entirely inside a computer that yet manages to smell like sawdust and leather straps and old, cozy, enclosed spaces.

http://www.myspace.com/bionulor