[reviews] afe102lcd
john hudak: miss dove, mr. dove

I'm sure John Hudak is without doubt one of those artists many of you should have heard mentioned here and there if you're into experimental music and/or in sound art. This guy from Massachusetts has some interesting works on several labels like Alluvial Recordings, and/OAR, Korm Plastics, Aesova, Intransitive Recordings, Digital Narcis, Presto!? and many others.

Despite the fact I just own his CD on and/OAR, I've had the chance to listen to a couple of his past recordings and if you're urgently looking for a label to identify his music let's begin by saying most of his works for many of you/us may sound abstract whatever it means.

According to my own opinion his personal style is basically oriented toward a sort of "tiny" sounds-minimalism (OK, I swear I'll never write such a bullshit again, so please forgive me!). This effort is based on a field-recording of birds made in Czech Republic during the summer of 2007, and later manipulated and reshaped via software in order to create a coherent composition.

Suggestion of the liner notes or not, after having read the sound-source are birds it all made more sense, but I write it just for those of you who want to know the hows and whys of a weird CD. Infact if I had to base the review just on the music I'd write this and interesting, abstract soft piece of pointillist-minimalism.

I suggest you to do a field-recording of birds yourself, you'll be amazed by the discovery those tiny animals emit sounds in a really rhythmical manner, add Hudak recorded it all from an adjacent building to that from which the sound of the birds where coming that means he has to deal with a great amount of echo.

This American sound artist sticks to the minimalist dogma of reducing the music to a really small number of sounds, thus if you're looking for hyper-sophisticated releases I guess that's not exactly suitable with your taste, but if you're in the ranks of those who are able to sit down patiently and listen to the developing of a minimal composition, I think this is definitely worth of a shot.

[Andrea Ferraris]