C. Reider – Sophist I & II
8.30.16 by Mike Haley

As a general rule of thumb humans find it wise to sidestep assurances of dilemma. For health and safety reasons we tend to avoid life’s cliffs and quicksands. But every rule has an exception. The view at the top of the mountain can reek of beauty to the point where we ignore the unstable ground. A shift of a single rock and PLOP! You’re a puddle of supper for scavengers. The hypnosis of nature can lull the imagination into idleness. The perpetual drip… drip… drip of a melting icicle. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. What distance will your imagination trek watching that sucker thaw before noticing your own frostbite?

Those are the audacious terms of C. Reider’s noise therapy on “Sophist I” (the blue tape) and “Sophist II” (the red tape). His tinkering with sound can be magnetic and calming, but risk is right behind the curtain. In the most casual ways, C. Reider knots sequences of inescapable coils. He creates filmy, and sometimes almost muted atmospheres, then proceeds to nudge them into shared spaces with corrupted noise to the point of vertigo. 9-volt beats, voices rising through distortion, asterisks of glimmering hope all helix into web-like patterns. Those patterns spiral in halcyon carousel cycles until all focus in cemented on them. Loop. Loop Loop. Loop. Meanwhile, disintegration kicks in. Rotten, resin walls coerce the spell. Through the highs and lows of “Sophist” I & II is a challenge to the balancing of senses. A blurred focus of yin and yang.

Listen with the lights on. Or off. I don’t care. But listen DEEP. Deep listening of these tapes will sink you into the earth. They are self released in absurdly stupid-small editions of 20 and 22 (The extra 2 copies really bugs me tbh). Get them now!