Review: Zheng Hao – Harmonium II

Released on Bezirk Tapes.

I fixate less upon the sources themselves and more upon the person manipulating them. The hands held apart at precise distances, the fingers connected to mixer dials by an anticipatory pinch, the slow and ceaseless tilting of wrists. The feedback is always in swell, recession or transformation, with low tones pooling slowly like wine poured into a large glass, or flicking into squirms of high frequencies, or inviting long honks akin to overblown woodwind. The sources are never at rest. Hao is continually intensifying or lessening the sound as it sways toward too much or too little, the hands guiding the setup between the last minuscule adjustment and the next.

The first instalment of Harmonium was released on ATTN's own label Hard Return, deploying only two contact microphones and two harmonicas in the generation of feedback. Here, the same principles are transposed to different configurations of material, with the absence of acoustic instruments leaving the feedback with greater dependence on the strange negotiations of circuitry. The resultant sound feels more unpredictable – capable of rolling toward a greater number of possible manifestations – even if it centres on the same graceful interplay of proximities and intensities. 

The first piece consists of feedback created by headphones placed close to a zoom recorder, with the resultant tones tuned into sine waves from Hao's modular synth. Sometimes it's a duet between slow, unsteady surges of low frequency and the brittle twitches of higher tones. At other points, she fades low feedback seamlessly into modular sine waves, like someone tipping water back and forth between two cups. Different vessels, same liquid. The latter piece utilises mixing desk and reverb pedal, with a buzzing drone playing host to exchange between rapid pips, rattling hoots and other transient characters. The buzz lifts in the final third, which sends a cluster of tones aloft to twist together like kites, converging upon a common note before swerving apart again. An abrupt ending feels like the only appropriate exit – not collapsing into resolution but rather cutting the lights, the process persisting, hands ever poised, somewhere unseen.