Rick Myers, Andy Votel, Sean Canty - Human Engineering

Correspondence-based transatlantic collaboration recorded between Manchester and Massachusetts over a six year period by a set of characters that may have been in cahoots for a good deal longer. Votel and Myers have been connected for a good minute, and the trio had most recently come together for a tape on Votel's Pre-Cert Home Entertainment imprint, confusingly also entitled Human Engineering. On this version of Human Engineering (which may or not be the same thing, and no-one involved is attempting to clear up the mystery) they make a play for the uncanny unknown of a detuned and fractured Berbarian Sound Studio ghost box, layering vinyl crackle dissonance, submerged spoken word interludes, various indecipherable tape manipulations and odd concreté in a way that feels very fitting for someone like Votel who's spent the best part of two decades dredging up similar sounds via Finders Keepers. As you can expect, you can rely on those involved to get the details just right, and if it's not exactly hauntological in the ways we might commonly understand then it's at least happy to render loose time, memory & form, and render it in a little psychoactive haze, ala Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Jean-Claude Risset and, if you want a more contemporary touchstone, even some of the wilder Valentina Magaletti solo outings. Suitably spooked stuff you could go mad trying to work out the meaning of. In which case, best to give over to the unknown. 
 
FFO: Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Jean-Claude Risset, Pôle's Kotrill, Berbarian Sound Studio