… shows a Ryoji Ikeda influence in its wafer thin and needle sharp digital bleeps and pops. Track timings are given with split second precision, and ther’s a concentration on micro-soundforms generally. Dull needle pops, five seconds apart, are accented on alternate speakers, and the duo play with the notion of echoes in other ways. Are we listening ti discrete sounds, or the muffled afterquiver of a single event, a tone’s micro-wake? Carefully explored fridge tones, whines clicks, noises and a kind of tinnitus techno, turn a potentially neutral listening experience into something more characterful and inventive.
—The Wire, UK
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Richard Chartier’s crystaline contributions sound like a thousand glasses breaking in slow motion and are generally hypnotic in a masochistic way. Every time SPEC. threatens to become precious and repetitive, Chartier and Deupree make some microscopic adjustment to the groove that leaves you respecting their ability to make infinitesimal variations in a music that “moves” so little.
—Alternative Press, US
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On Spec., Chartier’s flickering high-frequency pinpricks and evaporating glitches benefit from Deupree’s honed cyclical-rhythm sensibilities and granular syntheses. At times, it seems that the artists are waging a war against silence. Battle plans encoded as chirrupy electronics and micro-percussive taps are wired back and forth across the still soundfield. Chartier and Deupree execute their attacks with precision. A barrage of tiny explosions and surface dustings dots the duo’s ten “Specification”s (“spec[k]s”) with pockmark craters and notches. On “specification.four” the tactics change. Chartier’s chirping tones etch the glassy calm while programmed disturbances chip away at the music’s frangible substance, leaving it weakened and susceptible to his assault. Throughout the engagement, low-end is evident less as tangible basslines than as a flux-form vapor that swirls behind the frequency cluster-bombings and pepperings like eddies of noxious wind (“specification.three”) or as an insistent Morse-coded throb. By the closing “specification.ten” silence’s dominion has been thoroughly trounced, and a triumphant Chartier and Deupree scrawl their most lurid electronic signatures across its desecrated ramparts and battlements.
—Grooves Magazine, US
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When we interviewed taylor deupree in July, he said in reference to his “super synthetic and minimal music”, “i call what i’m doing ‘microscopic sound’…” Well, he’s doing it again, this time in collaboration with Richard Chartier (the “r” in 0/r). Together they’ve co-created spec. which is somewhat like ear-peering through a special audio-microscope to hear the daily lives of digital electrons at work and at play. Tiny, tiny buzzes and bleeps form a rhythmic counterpoint in specification.one; the motes of notes cycle and ring like submolecular chains. specification.two features more silence than sound, as spaciously arranged pulses expand in a widespread series of soundclones. Faint and sporadic drizzles of static fall in specification.three (6:27), to be joined by intermittent micro-chimes, several more energetic patterns and a denser, ruffling oscillation; the elements engage in an almost-organic interaction though they are undeniably synthetic. “specification.four” offers another oddly “natural” scene from the realms of digitized soundworlds, with a continual chatter not unlike crickets and a few other talkative insects of the night. Bloopier loops bubble up though specification.five, dappled with glinting subatomic particles and rougher outbursts. Sounding like a Salsa-flavored synchronization of record-skips and miniature squeaks, “specification.six” sets up a spry (though miniscule) robotic rhythm. Though regrettably short, “specification.eight” (1:57) is a favorite of mine, a surprisingly atmospheric piece… expansively tranquil yet edgy with anticipation. It’s amazing that such a mood can be imparted through decidedly non-emotional cues as the electronic fragments and quiet drones which inhabit this zone. Similarly, “specification.nine” pulses in a state of a low-key introspection, sprinkled with electronic detritus. Things take a turn for the discordant in specification.ten which resembles scanning the radio dial and receiving nothing but alien signals and gritty interference. Interesting in a freaky way. The 42.5 micro-electronic minutes of spec. will undoubtedly charge those who are tuned in to these particular frequencies, though will come across as glitchy noise to those who aren’t. Taylor Deupree and Richard Chartier obviously know what they’re after in their minimal-digital sound experiments, and have synthesized this 8.6 bit of tech-head heaven.
—Ambientrance, US
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Their collaboration is concerned with focus, on both sound and non-sound. these multi-sound constructions are basic structural entities, as if anything too complex would threaten attention of the elemental.
—Head Magazine, UK
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pittore, designer e artista sonoro dal brillante background mixed-media, l’americano richard chartier ha sin qui siglato tre eccellenti opere soliste edite da altrettante cult labels internazionali quali Instransitive, Meme e Microwave Recordings. i nomi delle suddette la dicono ovviamente lunga circa le scelte espressive di mr. chartier, minimalia elettro-digitale dalla grana finemente porosa, e la dose viene ora rincarata da due ulteriori dischi in vollaborazione con il connazionale taylor deupree (guida della 12k, a sua volta autore di numero si lavori a varia denominazione: uscita piu recente e l’ultra-minimale 12″ club-oriented Focux su audio.nl) e il giapponese nosei sakata a.k.a. *0 (oitre al recente album su Meme, sakata gestisce l’etichetta specializzata in CD-R mu.) facilmente immaginabili i contenuti di entrambe le pulicazioni: piu cadenzato spec., ticchettii, disturbi di fondo, granelli di pulviscolo digitale, spontanee microcombustioni, movenze spastiche, increspature molecolari che combiano in modo esemplare il puntillismo ritmico di deupree e la pacate modulazioni vetrose ripiche di chartier (7). – nicola catalano
—Blow Up, Italy
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a recent collaboration with Richard Chartier, is a fascinating assemblage of skeletal beats, oscillating high-frequency squeals, snakey bass tones, clouds of hiss, echoey decay, and disintegrating electronic bleeps-which on “specification.three” sound like drops of water sizzling on a hot skillet. These elements form and develop in loose patterns; they’re not amorphous by any stretch, but close listening is required to make sense of the din.
—Chicago Reader, US
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a more laid-back, zen approach to the oeuvre, with small arcs and taps slowly swelling across an absolutely blank sound canvas, with it’s strength lying in the slowly evolving micro-rhythms and layers of delicate, glass-like sine-resonances that take up the foreground, and the very subtle background developments. ..credit Deupree and Chartier with finding an unexpectedly complex order in the cellular chaos. bangin’ on a subatomic scale.
—Noise from the Spleens of Space, US
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…those interested in the particulate sound of Ryoji Ikeda or last year’s 20′ – 2000 series will enjoyspec, which is as much a testament to the absence of sound itself, alternatingly quiet and ear-shreddingly intense…
—XLR8R, US
