David Lee Myers (b1949; aka – between 1987 and 1993 – ‘Arcane Device’) is a leading figure in American electroacoustic music, most specifically of ‘feedback music’, created entirely synthetically with no standard acoustical sound input (so his music is properly considered purely electronic). Myers’s creations in this field – he does not see himself as a composer as such – have been described variously as ‘the sound of electricity singing to itself’ or ‘sounds from the ether’, the latter providing the title for this latest album.

The works here have all been created by Myers using his own invention, the feedback workstation, an electronic fusion of mixing board, computer, synthesiser and ring modulators. The results are a little startling at first, although the first track, ‘implicate order’, eases one in gently. For large stretches not much seems to happen, giving the feeling of a form of electronic minimalism, but later tracks – for instance, ‘what’s happening inside highs and lows’ –introduce sonorities that sound as if reimagined from ‘real’ inputs, such as drills or motor saws.

There’s little separation between tracks, so ‘Ether Music’ plays as if it were one large, hour-long composition (sorry, David). It has a rather mesmeric attraction and travels in the way any large-scale piece should do, not unlike, say, Paul Dolden’s (Starkland, 1/15). Some might aver that this is just (semi-organised) noise, not music, but I would disagree; it may not be particularly to my taste but this is music in any meaningful definition of the word. The sound, recorded and mixed by Myers himself, must be heard as being to specification. Feedback welcome!