Fis, aka Oliver Peryman, is widely known for his experimental electronic music. Starting out in the drum'n'bass scene, his music has gradually moved farther and farther away from any engagement with club culture, now having more in common with noise, musique concrète, and avant-garde composition -- and with this album, he has gone farther out than ever. Clear Stones is a collaboration with fellow New Zealander Rob Thorne, a Māori musician specializing in the taonga pūoro or "singing treasures," ancient instruments carved from wood, stone, gourds, bone, and seashells, that traditionally held a powerful cultural and spiritual significance for the Māori people. There's a whole universe of these instruments, including bone flutes, wooden and conch shell trumpets, stone percussion, and objects whirled around the player's head at the end of a cord, and Thorne is already known for combining them with modern technology (e.g. loop pedals), so this just seems like the next logical step. But fans of Fis expecting another dose of fractured beats and crushing bass weight might be disappointed on first listen; this is a much more relaxed, open, and atmospheric album than anything he has done before, and it's very much a collaborative effort with Thorne and his instruments to the fore, Fis using the studio as a tool to hyper-amplify, distort, and sculpt the recordings into forbidding new shapes. And the raw material he has to work with is spectacular: Thorne conjures a staggering array of sounds from his all-acoustic, organic instruments, variously resembling an electric guitar, theremin, motorbike engine, helicopter rotors, exotic birds, whalesong, and even the human voice. "Front Ear" is incredibly unnerving, with ghostly whistles, howls, and rattles underpinned by a rumbling thunder. "Wooden Lung" is absolutely terrifying, accompanying you into a dank Neolithic cave where hunters huddle around fires and a shaman chants to ward off something unspeakable that lurks in the darkness. "Glurn Herrin" deepens the ritual; mythical creatures awaken, scampering and stampeding through the primeval forest, summoned by the hunter's horn. The soft flute of "Whakauruuru" is shot through with bursts of electronic noise, like electrical discharge, before lapsing into a granular wash as a final drawn-out note ebbs away, like the ocean at dusk. A vibrant spirit of experimentation permeates this record; it's easily the most experimental thing Peryman has ever done, and also the least accessible -- though repeat listens bring rich rewards as the true depth of the soundworld created gradually reveals itself. This is one of those rare records, a true one-off that sounds like nothing else before or since. Many years from now, this music is going to sound every bit as unearthly as it does today, and every bit as captivating.
© John D. Buchanan /TiVo