Mikael Stavöstrand - Lite
(Mitek)
Mikael Stavöstrand has come far since the crypto-diabolical rumblings of Archon Satani. For
one thing, he's embracing digital design on the microsound level, making him a peer to the
artists recording for labels like Raster/Noton, Mille Plateaux, and 12K. As Lite opens,
you can almost hear Stavöstrand's scissors, snipping sounds composed for an installation
into more manageable pieces. The tracks that follow are strange amalgamations of digital
and natural elements, seemingly cobbled together from drips, glitches, bass pulses, insect
noises, and minute beats. One imagines what Stavöstrand must have recorded to assemble his
source material. Mainframe-dwelling ants on the march, brushing silicon crumbs from their
mandibles--in formation--with feathery antennae? Leggy mosquitoes being sucked into
internal cooling fans? Bewildered crickets drowning in liquid mercury? The actual source
of all these synchronized sounds is probably far more mundane, but Stavöstrand never
undermines the ambiguity. Forget microsound, Lite is microcosmic.
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