: P
author: RoLLyPoLLyFiShHeAdS
Pretty awesome noise guys! I really enjoyed your cd!
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Well done!
author: Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly
Miba is Mark Bartscher and Kristin Miltner, who present here there some of there electro-acoustic work. They live and work in the Bay Area and participated in several festivals there. On "The Corplate Porblem" they make use of acorns, bells, washers, voice, laptpos and selfcreated software patches. Miba tries to create "rhythmic granular textures ranging from harmonic washes to dense noise". The track opening "Weird Birds" reminded me of another but considerable older american electronic outfit, namely Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. But Bartscher and Miltner seem to be more inspired by the music of people like Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne and Alvin Curran. But there is a correspondance. One could say they make experimental, sample-based music off a very friendly kind. To put it differently, they keep the balance between experimental sound-explorations on the one hand, and ambient spacy music on the other. Well done.
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a wonderfully atmospheric, deeply contemplative textural adventure.
author: Allan Harrison, Splendid Magazine
Miba are Mark Bartscher and Kristin Miltner from San Francisco, two software-patching sound sculptors whose oddly-titled The Corplate Porblem deals a winning avant-garde hand. Their errorist tapestries are notable for their eerie ambience, with the likes of the glitch-calm "Weird Birds", or the placid "Getting Stuck In Sleeping Bags 1" possessing an oddly epic force-of-nature quality. The former, for example, consists of little more than the sound of a skipping CD, punctuated with swathes of droning ambient noise, yet the finished product appropriates a strangely mesmerizing (and decidedly minimal) meditation on the symbiotic relationship between the natural -- Bartscher and Miltner claim to use acorns and mammals as sample sources -- and the technological. There's even a foray into skittering, feather-light drum'n'bass on the intoxicating "Until Something Bigger Stops You", and some curiously disorienting voice manipulation on the closing "Now We Must Go". Best engaged as a complete whole, The Corplate Porblem is a wonderfully atmospheric, deeply contemplative textural adventure.
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Lots of interesting ideas here...
author: Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations
Miba is the duo of Mark Bartscher and Kristin Miltner, who make music with acorns, bells, washers, voice, laptops and self-created software patches. I'm fairly computer literate but I can't say I know what software patches are. But no matter. "Weird Birds" opens with chaotic tonal blasts rifling between the left and right channels. But while the meteor shower continues a minimalist ambient pattern arises over the horizon, ultimately blending with the bleeps. I like the combination of pleasant ambience and spastic urgency. "Bathing In Similar Objects" is next and leads us far deeper into a dense, howling, pulsating, multi-layered atmospheric realm. "Pulled Towards The Earth" and "Until Something Bigger Stops You" play like one track and is a deep space piece, at the core sounding like old time Klaus Schulze but also drawing on experimental and other assorted influences. Very nice. "Getting Stuck In Sleeping Bags" (parts 1-3) and "But Now We Must Go" are similarly spacey, but include a virtual parade of sound samples. Banging, clattering, bleeping, blurping.... fun! And the latter incorporates eerie alien robotic voicings into the mix. Lots of interesting ideas here and would appeal to space ambient fans who are also into avant-garde sound-art explorations.
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