Review: Denton / Watson - Latencies

“More questions: Shall we set out a maximum or ideal duration? …also are these efforts intended to be laid over one another or kept as separate recordings?” 

It’s a premise from which streams of sonic creativity and contemplative thought both flow forth: two artists recording simultaneously at separate locations, with the end results overlain and edited into “finished” pieces. The music feeds the unravelling introspection and vice versa; gentle buzzings hover unsteadily like plastic wasps or caught coat zips, grinding against faint breezes that paint landscape definition through the intricacies (speed, texture) of air movement; static coughs and crackles bring to mind failed walkie-talkie communication or lost radio frequencies, and it’s as though the pair are attempting to communicate through the mere act of riding the same wave of thought, with corporeal notions of geography and proximity collapsing as Watson and Denton engage in an intimate conversation across the plain of simultaneous existence.

Both work with the sonically curious; sounds that feel birthed as organic matter yet unlike anything homely and recognisable. Digitised bells flicker in front of drones that cling to the air like particles of moisture, while white noise cracks into a dry powder as a breeze starts to toss its coarse grains into the air. The noise feels communicative and yet distinct – I stumble into flashes of seemingly co-ordinated movement, only to hear the sounds scarper in separate directions, as though desperately intent of vanquishing any suspicion of miraculous, telepathic interconnection – nevertheless, I am momentarily whisked away into thoughts of how everything heaves and rumbles as one gigantic organism of relentless vibration, unknowingly linked through the constant cascade of sound and movement.