A.F.R.I. Studios

This CD from Lucky Kitchen's Sparkling Composers series barely meets full-length requirements with its 30-minutes-flat running time. Then again, it is long enough for what it proposes. A.F.R.I. Studios is the project of Andres Franz Krause. This electronic composer follows the lowercase esthetic, concentrating on pure tones, slow crescendos, and textures, sound for sound. The three compositions on Goodbye if You Call That Gone are untitled and all share the same palette: sounds that lie somewhere between drones and electrical hum. They require good speakers, a calm environment, and volume to fill the space. Their sparseness holds crystalline beauty in the vibrations they create, much like Carl Michael von Hausswolff's works. Track three is particularly nice in this regard and constitutes the disc's best moment. Of course, it remains ultra-minimal music intended to be experienced rather than enjoyed. Even by the standards established by Hausswolff, Bernhard Günter, even Ryoji Ikeda, this music feels extremely low-key, maybe too eventless for the aficionados of the genre. Considering the short-time duration and limited appeal, Goodbye if You Call That Gone is for the initiate only and should be considered as complementary listening. ~ François Couture, Rovi