From Foxy Digitalis:
When reading the idea behind this new compilation on the Australian Room 40 label which was compiled by Lawrence English, I was honestly expecting lots of leftover digital hiss and “field recordings” of silence around Ayers Rock which is tried to be given meaning through a pseudo-intellectual concept. The reality is totally different though. Not only does “On Isolation” contain a great number of very interesting tracks, also the concept has been implemented in a successful way by most of the contributing artists.
English invited 15 artists to “interpret senses of disconnection, isolation and solitude […] to help awaken a deep imagination with these matters.” The 15 contributors are usual suspects when it comes to conceptually driven avantgardistic digitalism, but many of them manage well to awaken the imagination of isolation that Lawrence English had asked for and to deviate in just the necessary way from their other output. Steinbrüchel provides a very melodic piece with organic drones coming and going. Another fine melodic piece is by Zane Trow, an artist whose recordings are entirely new to me. The field recording dominated and the almost silent pieces by Scanner, Richard Chartier, Jeph Jerman or Ben Owen are maybe not the strongest moments on the CD and make me think that field recordings are too placative a way to display isolation – go to an isolated place and record it. The pieces which add other elements work better in that regard because they show the isolation through a certain atmosphere. Anyhow, other than expected, the CD works really well and, especially when listened to on headphones, really does induce thinking about isolation and its aspects.
