SD2
Katchmare - 40
Painted cdr with stamped paper sleeve
Mastered by Aaron Paolucci
Released 2006
50 copies

Track List:
 
1.      (0:30)
2.      (0:56)
3.      (0:17)
4.      (1:27)
5.      (1:06)
6.      (0:12)
7.      (0:38)
8.      (0:45)
9.      (0:13)
10.    (1:09)
11.    (1:03)
12.    (0:34)
13.    (0:16)
14.    (0:57)
15.    (1:05)
16.    (0:59)
17.    (1:24)
18.    (0:34)
19.    (0:11)
20.    (2:00)
21.    (0:31)
22.    (1:04)
23.    (0:42)
24.    (0:33)
25.    (0:31)
26.    (0:17)
27.    (0:11)
28.    (0:34)
29.    (0:16)
30.    (0:52)
31.    (1:24)
32.    (0:49)
33.    (0:17)
34.    (0:10)
35.    (0:30)
36.    (1:22)
37.    (0:10)
38.    (0:27)
39.    (0:22)
40.    (0:48)



Heathen Harvest Review:

August 15, 2009


Mark Hoffman is Katchmare, an experimental electronica outfit from the US. Hoffman is testing on what Glitch n’ Noise can produce together within the boundaries of Low-fi instrumental. He has been utterly prolific while engendering Katchmare, issuing multiple other albums since 2006. He currently belongs to the Scissor death collective and has played with innumerable bands within the margins of experimental electronica a fact that has opened the margins of his aural knowledge and capacity for uncompromised creation. He has had  gigs in the US and Japan also. “40” as its name suggests compiles forty tracks of short procedure, condensing abstract and often hectic constructions of multiple faces, contours and tones, mixing rhythmic minimalisms with extravagant aural nomenclature in a continuous succession of rare inventive. 

This record is as variable as the mind of a monkey on steroids locked inside a cell and as stubborn as a donkey trying to cross “Wonderland” in fear of the unknown. The mood of the 40 mini tracks that conforms the album swings like a mad pendulum, from frantic to maniac, from demented to psychedelic, from noisy to abstract, always waving with an unexpected issue and losing the listener in a dense cluster of multiple aural snacks. Each track is differentiated in its own chaos but maintains this weird sense of dynamism displayed in the eerie logic from its multiple bits, beeps, undulations, glitch outbursts and sometimes harsh textures during its administration. The transition of the album it’s almost like cascade on the ears of the listener, track after track threshing in a continuum of exhilarated rarity and abstraction that falls with parsimonious brevity. Important to highlight the fact that the short period of the tracks usually varying from 1 minute to 50 something seconds allows the listener to have a glimpse through the microscopic threshold of electronic awkwardness presented with each track  Its pretty incredible how the author managed to come with all those sounds and textures with just one single artefact. Hoffman only used an old Alesis drum machine for the creation of this album and the variety of aural modulations and elements presents is simply incredible, so much for so little! 

The work is a random generality of experimental tracks with no other real connection in between than the fact they were all done by Hoffman during a prolific creativity period. He said that this CD is the final compilation after ten to twenty CDs of micro tracks exploring aural forms and other diverse sonic anomalies through his Alesis, that is all. It may get boring very quick because of the lack of connection between tracks and its truly defying to follow the minimalisms condensed during each track either way, after the first ten tracks it becomes white noise for your brain, elevator music, background easy listening for the psychiatric hospital and you don’t even care about. As a experimental play it is interesting, there is many things there that can be used to create a more dimensional structure, more subscribed to at least some directionality for the listener to appreciate. It reminds as another probatory examination of glitch in its diverse forms, wild uncompromised electronica and the incredible versatility that a simple electronic devise may bring to life.