SRA

"Magnetic Ghosts consists of minimalistic play with a 1970’s cassette player, some antiquated audio gear, damaged tapes, and contact mics. The questionable predictability of tape — by way of hidden artifacts — has been cause for study for decades. Ilhan Mimaroglu was bisecting and overdubbing before extensive comparative studies could even be launched. Meirino is more overt in his exposition, as the track titles say (“Head Cleaning,” “Auto-Reverse and End”). Like the other disc, Magnetic Ghosts renders preconceptions of the material futile. The tracks consist of variations on mechanical repetition with little recognizable sound — tape hiss features prominently in a few spots, which, in tandem with the other components, comes off surprisingly structured. Elsewhere Meirino transforms the tape player’s tiny motors as makeshift drone sources, interspersed with the faint clicks of second-stage moving parts and tape heads. It’s an examination of the potential of discarded materials, which may or may not have been music documents in themselves, and it works.

Before we riff on the demise of specific areas of music, a further examination of the music’s boundaries might be useful. A dialogue could begin with Meirino’s own words about the process of recording, which is “…all about the listener [involvement] to make his own choice about how he is listening to [music] and questioning the act of making sound itself."

~Alan Jones"