Adam Stanovic was born in Leeds, now has residency at Sheffield. Here he is with Ténébrisme(IMED 18153) 1 showcasing very recent compositions 2015-17. He exhibits the now-commonplace concerns with transforming musical instruments, pieces of metal, audio travelogues and such like, but his feisty essays indicate he is trying to challenge the received wisdom of contemporary electro-acoustic music, expressing a certain frustration with over-used tropes in the genre. A dull-witted noise-lover like me can certainly dig his roary pieces, which have a lot more fire and chaos than we’re used to in the field; plenty of tidal waves of digital information surging and rebounding around imaginary spaces like titanic forces, sometimes with quite shocking dynamics, cut-offs, and wild timbral shifts. Ctrl C, Metallurgic and Inam all have this rather threatening density to them, and Foundry Flux is as alarming a portrait of Sheffield’s industrial past as you’re ever likely to hear. Bonus points too for composing a homage piece to Beatriz Ferreyra, the Argentinian wild lady of electro-acoustic music.

Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector, June 9, 2019