Motion: Movement In Australian Sound (PRE003)

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As global communication and cheap air travel help diminish geographic homogeneity in the arts, there's less of a need to showcase music based on national identity. That being said, the Preservation label has done an excellent job of assembling a compilation of Australian names and soon-to-be names. Its
artistic decisions on which musicians to include and the ordering of their tracks create a mood ranging from low-key and lulling to pensive - like the sound of an abyss just starting to crack open beneath your feet.

One of the most noteworthy artists on the set is Alan Lamb, having built his reputation on a series of CDs using the interplay of telephone wires and the variable Australian environment. While his track, 'Fragment of the Outback', doesn't pioneer any new stylistic territory, the gut-chilling ambient terror that his work always evokes - the monolithic drones and high-tension explosions emanating from wires cracking and reverberating in the wind - is welcome.

Other well-known names include Pimmon and Oren Ambarchi, but many of the delights on 'Motion' come from artists whose names aren't yet familiar to the international music scene. Qua's 'Stranger Comforts Have Slipped By' opens with a ping-pong irritation ricocheting across the speakers, only to be joined by a blanket of warmer, comforting electronics and plucked guitar strings. Pretty Boy Crossover's 'In So Far' is the closest thing on these discs to a pop song - imagine the shoegazing band Slowdive being remixed by Jetone or Mitchell Akiyama.

Minit closes 'Motion' out with the 11-minute 'IJmuiden', a slow-motion dream with broken piano and keyboard bits traveling through radio transmission static. If you use your imagination, you can almost hear the deep whooshing sound of a didgeridoo in the mix as well. Probably an audio hallucination caused by some latent desire to link the music back to the country - old habits are difficult to break. In the end, though, the success of 'Motion' is based not on where the musicians reside but on one simple thing: the engaging choices that they all made in their compositions.