Released February 2006. Available as a free download here
THE WIRE ISSUE 264, FEB 2006
You could think of a release like this as a kind of audio blog – a series of sonic events linked together in an order in which their discoverer finds interesting, before being left hanging in cyberspace for passing surfers to investigate. But to do so would diminish the artistry involved. Despite using such a self – deprecatory moniker, sound artist Justin Hardison creates collages where the source material is as beguiling as the placement is meticulous, and The Quality Of Something Audible has much to offer anyone prepared to don headphones and tune in. On a track like “Song Seven”, astately, melancholy piano part occupies the centre of the stereo spectrum, while insectoid flurries of digital debris scurry to its farthest reaches. After an abrupt caesura, the piano is replaced by a doleful harp – the logic of this development unclear but somehow convincing. “Wide – Awake” also features a yin, yang pair of harp chords, this timewith a faintly oriental cast – they come swathed in static and punctuated by a single, slurred guitar note that conjures a whole imaginary Morricone score. Like the whole CD, it’s poised, astringent and entirely lovely. (Chris Sharp)