Ben Spiers is another name in the ever-growing list of notable New Zealand sound artists. In addition to his collaborations with Birchville Cat Motel, 1/3 Octave Band, and his work with Anthony Milton as Seen Through and Glory Fckn Sun, Spiers runs Transient Recordings, point of origin for this 3" CDR.

The music within vacillates between cutting feedback sounds, string windings and un-windings, and string-and-neck percussion, with plenty of delay, reverb, and a pretty gnarly overdriven sound. In the course of one sixteen minute track, Spiers, who credits himself with 'guitar, effects, amplifier', does pretty much everything he can think of to the guitar with out ever actually playing it. The resulting music is rife with tension and long periods of rest that are filled out with the occasional daunting sound explosion, but this isn't an unnecessarily harsh affair. The slowly looping swells of noise and reverberation build ever so slightly, before coming to a natural rest, and the whole thing has a very organic feel, like a time-condensed recording of a guitar being decimated by age, tumbling out of tune, and finally breathing out it's lasts gasps of amplitude on the ground.

Definitely for fans of the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, this release treads in the same waters as albums by Campbell Kneale, but instead of the brutal full-spectrum tonality one expects from Birchville Cat Motel, this is a decidedly minimalist offering. The 3" medium is a perfect fit, as too much of this could drive a man mad, but in a sixteen minute serving, it simply whets the appetite. 7/10 -- Ged Gengras (9 May, 2007)