Rare Frequency › Stephan Mathieu + Taylor Deupree Transcriptions (Spekk) CD

Stephan Mathieu + Taylor Deupree
Transcriptions (Spekk) CD

This is the first time that German sound artist Stephan Mathieu and New York’s Taylor Deupree have worked together, but they’ve been traveling in the same sonic circles for years now. Both are masters of a lyrical sort of electronic minimalism that, in less assured hands, is all too often just innocuously pretty, with no there there beneath the froth and frills. There’s definitely substantive heft to Transcriptions, though it’s of a spectral, intimated sort. Mathieu works with wax cylinder recordings and 78s as his raw materials and the soft hiss and next-world melodies give the music much of its ghostly aura and delicate grit. Deupree plays guitar and synthesizer, adding a bit of melodic structure. Ultimately, however, this is the kind of music that’s at its most captivating when it’s all but cast adrift, with no overt signposts to guide you as you listen.