Scanner -- Sound For Spaces -- Sub Rosa

Track Listing

1. Documenta X
2. Slow Motion
3. Incarceration
4. Rivers & Bridges
5. Invisible Choirs
6. Hearing is Believing
7. Air Foil
8. A Piece of Monologue
9. Disclosure Scanner

Sound for Spaces, what a perfect definition of ambient. As such it becomes an appropriate title for this album, which is a collection of some of Robin Rimbaud's past and present work, with parts dating back more than a decade. In his own words, Rimbaud explains his music is "about memory, and recording certain moments or spaces in time and capturing them for others to interpret."

When I first heard of Scanner I was listening to the evening news on the CBC radio station. He was in town playing a show at a Vancouver club, and he planned to use a scanner to pick up random cell phone conversations and spontaneously incorporate them into his set. CBC was interviewing people on the street who owned cell phones and asking what they thought of the possible violation, and whether or not they would be making any calls that night. Naturally no one answered yes. In the few years since then Scanner has become increasingly well known for his multifaceted musical output. His numerous collaborations, remixes, and otherwise steady workload have amassed into a body of work that is hard to ignore.

Arranged in reverse chronology, this disk takes a look at some of Rimbaud's first ever work with 1984's "Disclosure", right up to "Documenta X" and "Slow Motion" which were both recorded in '97. The only track that is an extremely taxing listen is "A Piece of Monologue", written in 1988. This is a man's reverberating voice rambling incoherent poetry over a slight background of low-pitched drones, and it carries on unchanging for a lengthy 15 minutes. Other than that there are no complaints, and for someone who releases as much material as he does, Scanner continues to impress me with the continual quality of each release.