review

here is a review just in from Vitalweekly.net

VITAL WEEKLY
number 574 week 18

MYKEL BOYD/FRANCISCO LOPEZ (10" Lathe Cut by Somnimage)
Maybe you have seen the word Lathe Cut before, and you don't what it is? It's a piece of thin plastic, in which grooves are cut with music. It's done only (as far as I know) by Peter King in New Zealand. There are several people who collect what he cuts, since the editions can be very small - fifteen is the minimum I believe - and they can turn out to be true collectors items. The sound is not always too great, and can't be compared to vinyl. On the split record by Mykel Boyd and Francisco Lopez - limited to a mere sixty copies - this disadvantage has been used as an advantage. Mykel Boyd, who released this on his own Somnimage label (who also released an excellent set of three Hafler Trio 7"s in a wooden box), uses field recordings from Stonehenge, and which sound like a small campfire and a far away overhead plane or car passing. The static crackles of the fire are perhaps (!) processed into loops, and mingle nicely with the crackles of the lathe cut itself. Something similar does Francisco Lopez on the other side. Here he manipulates eight two second samples by one Luis Marte. It's not easy to tell what these samples should sound like, but Lopez creates a dense pattern with them, and after a slow start, things go up in volume quite a bit and the hiss and crackle become alive. At one point half way through there is even a bit of rhythm to be traced and that is something which is really an odd ball in the work of senor Lopez. When it cuts out towards the end, Lopez cleverly leaves some space blank on his master, but of course on a lathe cut there is nothing such as silence and the blank space is therefore nicely filled with more hiss. Nice exploitation of what some could see a disadvantage. Great record. (FdW) = Frans de Waard