Debut release from Simon Keep under the name Holkham, who has worked as a sound designer on feature length & short films, motion graphics and commercials. His interest in sonic art exhibition and installation springs from a desire for sound to be heard and considered in a more conscious way. In may 2003 he initiated an environmental sound project at the Royal London Hospital, which has lead his work towards researching ways of listening as well as working with issues of noise pollution and silence. His other projects similarly work with sound outside the human audible range, mainly radio waves.

While the work of Holkham is littered with rhetoric of exploring sound for its ‘scientific’ qualities and applications, his presentations on Komatta Saru are not so much scientific as cinematic. Grabbing small melody fragments and meshing them together with oddly looping electronic glitches and percussive cut ups, Keep creates a genuinely enjoyable and for the most part gentle ride through the outer rim of electronica. Tracks such as Bose Bose feature probing synth parts that wash back over each other in waves of reverse processing, there’s an undercurrent of distortion present here, a tension that adds a real appeal to this piece. These ideas of creating tension are repeated throughout the record – Tam for instance has a soft yet piercing quality to it – like rubbing your finger on a blunt knife. There’s often a sense of danger here, but you realise that there’s no real chance of slicing open your skin, this inherent security meaning that at no point does this album make you feel uncomfortable. At its best, this album has a swelling quality, a sense of purpose and direction that engages with the listener in a plethora of ways.

Komatta Saru is a thoughtful, mature and accomplished album that demonstrates that there is plenty of new life in the electronic music genre, particularly when done with intelligence and sensitivity. An essential purchase for headphone adventurers.