Jackson-Pratt & Shredded Nerve - Split CD

In this split two masters of their craft each make a sonic homage to a different painter. The sounds from both Shredded Nerve and Jackson-Pratt capture varying degrees of reflected light. Jackson-Pratt places us inside what feels like a painter’s studio, spacious and sun soaked with large northeast facing windows. Every sound flits in the sunlight with room to expand and contract. Stark forms emerge from a sparseness which defies titles. Seany’s compositions evoke a sense of endless variation much like Robert Ryman’s paintings.

Outrenoir, Shredded Nerve’s stygian homage to Pierre Soulages, transports us to the bowels of a cave without a torch. In the pitch-dark, ghostly echoes appear painted on the walls in shadow, dark pigments, and soot. We’re creeping along on an abandoned mine rail. There is nothing and yet everything to see here. The edge of textures and pitfalls are obscure but this is a radiant darkness reflecting our psychological fears of the unseen. In an interview Soulages explains “The color black is only present to reflect, transform, transmute the light it collects.” In this composition we hear Justin transforming and transmuting collected sounds that otherwise cannot be discerned.

- Maralie Armstrong-Rial