Gap / Void

The debut collaborative album by Automatisme (Canadian producer William Jourdain) and Swiss field recordist, visual artist, writer/academic and psychogeographer Stefan Paulus, who first met through shared projects with Mille Plateaux/Force Inc, including contributions to the Ultrablack Of Music anthology. Gap/Void is based on field recordings made by Paulus during mountain expeditions in the Swiss Alps, the Caucasus, and the Arctic Circle—documenting stormy weather, high alpine winds, avalanches, and sounds emanating from glaciers and from the insides of crevices and caves. Paulus folded these recordings into hundreds of layers of sound (like the geological strata of their geographic sources) and sent these ambient/noise pieces to Jourdain as raw material for his bespoke Automatisme techniques. Gap/Void leads with five rhythmic tracks (cut to 33rpm LP) featuring Automatisme's trademark interstitial digital synthesis and elastic/erratic signal processing, followed by