Tryptych

Album Review

After releasing a pair of 2009 vinyl EPs — swiftly combined on compact disc as Symbiosis — Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker remained industrious, issuing three titles in small vinyl pressings in 2010. Forest of Evil (April) presented two expansive and unsettling sound collages of swarming drones, rattling techno, and threatening tribal percussion. On the six-track/45-minute Liberation Through Hearing (July), Pole’s gentle dub crackle was pitched into a warehouse blaze, and the percolating bubbles from Herbie Hancock's “Rain Dance” were transformed into burbling radioactive goo. The first side of Voices of Dust (November) featured two of the trilogy’s most thrilling moments: “Hashshashin Chant,” a feverish tribal track, and “Repository of Light,” where serene spangles bloomed out of industrial hum. Each part of the series gets its own disc for Tryptych, an abnormally sized fold-out package that adds a substantial quantity of new material. These six tracks are spread across the discs, but they amount to a 40-minute set that can be taken as a part four. Compared to the majority of the material on the parent releases, they’re placid, ambient pieces that are not nearly as disturbed but recall the quiet menace of 23 Skidoo's Urban Gamelan and The Culling Is Coming, as well as the drum-less ambient dub side of Basic Channel.