Review: Zbeen - K-frame

“Sequences, combinations, rotations and reflections, series and dimensions. Sounds act as vectors and they can be regarded as the representation of quantities like force and velocity, which are defined by magnitude and direction. As vectors, sounds generate spaces whose dimension is the size of a maximal basis set.”

Just when K-Frame begins to sound like the babbling operations desk of a spacecraft, the recurrent mixture of bubbles and sloshes starts to rise up through the middle and uproot the atmospheric basis in the artificial. As the project members (Gianluca Favaron, Ennio Mazzo) state in the quote above, the release preoccupies itself with the abstract concepts of space and energy rather than the objects that bring these concepts into being; thus it is appropriate that K-Frame toes an indistinct line between the organic and the mechanical, harnessing all sorts of hums, beeps, slurps and static bursts in its observation of sonic physics.

Favaron and Mazzo clearly understand the evocation of “dimension” well enough to make best use of it; the release is stacked full of intricate detail that always resounds with clarity, regardless of how densely populated the pieces become. Sheets of white noise hang before electronic beeps without muffling their timbre, while the scrapes and crumbles of earthly material (evoking frictional motion against concrete and rock) emanates beautifully from the centre. However, one aspect that feels under-explored – for this reviewer anyway – is that of sonic reaction and interrelation: sound impacting on other sounds, changes in tone, velocity and pitch that create a notable transformation in the surrounding texture, demonstrating the energy interchange that brings the concept of “force” into existence. But in terms of the other qualities of its construction, K-Frame is otherwise impressive.