Jo Thomas
Alpha
Entr’acte LP E82
Alpha is, surprisingly, the first album of the music of Jo Thomas, a London based electroacoustic composer whose work has been presented and performed widely around Europe and in the US. The three compositions included on this vinyl-only title span the past ten years, including “Glitch”, “Dark Noise” and a new piece, “Alpha”. Though Thomas’s work is to all appearances purely electronic, she is predominantly interested in such physical- world elements as imperfection, mistakes and the nuances of the human voice, and she incorporates these into her work in various ways.
The appropriately titled “Glitch”, a complex soundscape that wobbles, whistles, squeals and explodes across a vast range of sonic textures and frequencies, makes use of such audio detritus as clicks, tape
hiss, distortion and the by-products of the granular synthesis process that are normally discarded. These bits of noise added to the computer-generated signal give the piece a warmth that might otherwise be missing, at times pushing into grating, sand-in-the-gears territory. “Dark Noise” is more architectural in intent, with particular attention given to the physical placement
of sound sources and the way they combine to create a virtual space (though it must be said that Thomas’s use of sonic architecture on all three pieces is excellent). The composition develops more slowly, subtly and systematically than “Glitch”, with little percussive sounds rattling over a dark, swirling undercurrent of low-pitched wind, and the occasional intrusion of a highly processed female voice.
“Alpha” is inspired by the writing of the American post-feminist academic Donna Haraway, best known for her Cyborg Manifesto. The piece uses as its raw material electronically altered recordings of mobile phone calls (some of them extremely low-fidelity) by both women and men – Thomas’s multi-sexual response to what she sees as a female-centric orientation in Haraway’s cyborg theory. “Alpha” is the most musical of the compositions on the LP, with nearly discernible pitches played on what at least appears to be a keyboard instrument or sampler. But as usual Thomas throws wrenches into the works at every opportunity: the otherwise placid piece breaks down repeatedly, is interrupted again and again by distorted glitches and discordant metallic sounds, and from time to time goes completely silent for uncomfortably long periods. Which is both imperfect and perfect. : Dave Mandl
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