Jasmine Guffond - Alien Intelligence
Australian artist Jasmine Guffond favours long, drawn-out tracks where she develops an idea to its full realisation. She either sweeps you along through her soundscapes or leaves you adrift if you can’t quite follow. These are sound tapestries that are not easily grasped. ‘Alien Intelligence’ is particularly impenetrable. Here, you are invited to witness an artist at work, riding the waves of sound she produces on the Serge modular synthesiser from Paris’s GRM Institute. On this album, Guffond grapples with the boundary between human input and machine output. What she does, as she describes it, not only makes the machine sound a certain way but is also influenced by the behaviour of the electronic elements she manipulates. This refined approach leads her to ‘Alien Intelligence’. As a listener, the concept may resonate less deeply. What you get are three long, drone-rich tracks that invite meditative immersion. The closing track, ‘Serge & Maxine Variation, Two’, is the most intriguing. Here, everything comes together: melodic tension, tonal density, and fluid volume that carries you along in a somewhat unsettling wavelike cadence, clashing dull bass tones, persistent drone, and whimsical melodic flourishes. A strong conclusion to an album that keeps us eagerly anticipating more.