When I first got this album, I couldn’t get past the opening few seconds. Those days seem far away and inconceivable now, as much as when Berio’s Visages was unlistenable, or even farther back, when Carter’s double concerto was a jumble of random noises. Now this album is one exhilarating pleasure after another. Less abrasive than Merzbow, not more, as I once feared. I hesitate to make generalizations. Some of Merzbow is less abrasive than Merzbow…

All and all, Sporatic Spectra is powerful stuff, as strong and elemental as a tidal wave or a monsoon, yet “clean and precise, like a surgeon’s scalpel,” which is producer Erik Hoffman’s mot juste. Come to think of it, elemental and precise precisely describes Sporatic Spectra.

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