and/9

Track List:

01. Hell And The Hammer
02. Boil Order
03. Industrial Itch

This new enigmatic and atmospheric 3" release displays yet another side to
the works of the already versatile Canadian sound artist, DJ, and music
journalist Andrew Duke. It was initially intended as an abstract sonic
commentary on how some politicians (particularly in his home town of
Halifax, Nova Scotia), tend to have misplaced priorities when it comes to
placing importance on preserving the natural environment. Therefore he
writes: "I often use the sounds of Halifax in my work as my way of
commenting on how something so beautiful (our harbor) is destroyed
through (in)action -- we've been pumping our untreated sewage into the
harbor for over 200 years and the city is still more interested in building new
roads and buildings than sewage treatment plants. There are outbreaks
every summer from people who get sick from the water because it is so
contaminated; so some of the edgier (moments) are about that -- (i.e.) the
illnesses we bring upon ourselves." Includes one track with Anne
Sulikowski (Building Castles Out Of Matchsticks).

Reviews
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Ear/Rational (April 2004)
Electric tickles on your ear, the (for the lack of a better word) percussion
sounds like someone rolling marbles across my skull - too bad I can't fell
them. A drawn out melody spirals and tones pull. The following track has
luscious water sounds, low pitched from deep inside a boat and something
that sounds like the splashing on top of the deck. Of course, these are not
the real sounds, but a feeling I get from their creation. A generated song that I
love. Then, mmm, juicy atmospheres, nothing except an emptiness. Room
tone, and little else. What this causes you to do is pay attention to your
surroundings. I have equally been listening to a light that I installed with a
dimmer buzz and the far more tonal music of my G4 fan. Time for bed, I
guess. (Don Poe)

Igloo - Microview Volume 7 (March 2004)
* * * * 1/2 Halifax's Andrew Duke has released a brilliant mini
nineteen-minute three-track for Seattle's and/OAR. Its watery, ebullient
austerity drifts in a shallow depth of field on "Boil Order." The microtonal
silent roar of the nearly fourteen minute "Industrial Itch" is a drone based on
a one second clip, as other tracks here, it is derived from field recordings
and other sound samples from cities in Ontario and Nova Scotia. The mythic
fade and placid ebb of faint bubbly cracks in the surface are pale among the
din drawl of the invisible wake here. Subtle as a fly caress, while undulating
througout the room, deeper than a San Francisco fog atop Twin Peaks.
(TJ Norris)