Microform is the brainchild of Liam McConaghy, and this whopping 80-minute cassette seems to be – according to Discogs – his seventh release. I had never heard of him or the label Liquid Library before. Let’s start with the label. Liquid Library is based in the UK and has strong DIY/LoFi ethics in its artwork. From all their releases, I only recognize Max Eastman as the guy behind Tribe Tapes and Stuart Chalmers, whose name is dropped quite often in Vital Weekly. Microdeform had a review here earlier, too (Vital Weekly 1081), but that was before my time. After reviewing that earlier one, “Neural Regression”, Frans felt the urge to listen to some old zoviet*france, but with “Reassess Your Life Priorities”, I don’t feel anything like that.
“Reassess Your Life Priorities” is sort of the Covid-project from Liam, if I may say so. Old recordings from between 2008 and 2016, including live recordings, were mixed by Liam himself into two 40-minute tracks and got some proper treatment. With that in mind, it’s pretty amazing to hear the consistency of the sound. Every artist knows how difficult it is to maintain continuous pressure in sound and composition; in quality and variation, the tracks are spot-on produced. So what is on here? We’re pointing our browsers to Discogs again, where we find ‘Microdeform creates exploratory, ambient transmissions, building hypnotic, looped layers of improvised instrumental passages, tape treatments and live turntable sampling from old records, creating a mood that is alternately blissful, meditative, cacophonous and intense. The result is a heady trip of cosmic oscillations and mesmeric dark sorcery shrouded in mist, drifting slowly into the ether’.
So yeah, that about covers it, although I can’t find too much of the turntable sampling here. It’s solid electronic danceable music where British influences are audible; A bit of 8-bit sound here and there, yet no Nintendo style; Some parts of ambient dronish sounds… Will I play it more often? I don’t know because it’s not a style I listen to all that often. Having said that, if you are into British IDM / EDM and experiments, try it. This one might surprise you.
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