Vital Weekly (NL)

It may not come as a surprise that these two composers decided to do a collaboration. This CD contains 13 tracks, but can be considered as one work. There are breaks, but not necessarily on (or should I say before) the start codes. It is impossible to tell who’s done what on this disc; we hear all the sounds we know from both musicians, but blended together so well, that it could have been one person. From this point of view the project seems to have been very successful. The minimalism of Chartier is complemented wonderfully by the rawer appraoch of Sakata (and vice versa, of course). Sound sources are pulses, sine waves and noises and once again, this stuff works best on headphones, because of the stereo spectrum involved. On speakers some of the (very important) stereophonic qualities of the music get lost. In general this is a quiet work, but not really of a relaxing nature, which is a nice paradox of course. Some of the stuff really gets into the head, which can be pretty unnerving, but also very satisfying (yet another paradox!). This is microwave at its best. And a note about the cover: excellent artwork! (MR)