(23Five)

After Catlin’s first CD – 2003′s “Slow twitch” on Dr.Jim – four years have passed before “Radio ghosts”, a collection of six pieces – two for acoustic guitar, three for electric guitar and one for crash cymbal. It’s an intriguing assortment, in which Catlin shows his ability in setting guitar strings in continuous motion, thus creating systems that highlight the impact between an oscillating emotional response and the sheer mechanical experiment. Staying away from manual interventions as much as he can, the Australian is one of those artists who seems to prefer the observation of an unfolding process, with just a modicum of changes over the course of the pieces. Motorized preparations and alternative tunings contribute to the creation of tapestries that exploit the clash of the adjacent upper partials while maintaining a sort of inner consonance, the only exception being the cymbal-based track “Mirage”, which throws its most potent rays of unfathomable environmental symbiosis with a higher degree of controlled violence. The title track adds a radiophonic presence to the existing soundscape, determining phenomena of imaginary voices accompanying a mantric graduality. All things considered, Catlin’s music is quite different from that produced by the names quoted in the press release – Branca, Rowe, O’Rourke, Organum – as its remote morphology is perceivable deep within its most obscure sections, in contrast with the oppressive rumbles and deformations reminding us what Greek composer Dimitri Voudouris wrote: “Consciousness itself is a vibration pattern”.