ORGANUM ELECTRONICS
“Stilness”

2020
Press release text:
“A constant flow of waves
Cold, light and fluorescent
Crystallise empty feelings
The howling echoes of a fox
Somewhere in a vast open plain
An asteroid collides with the others
Flickers in the ember hollow remain
Rust slowly nurtures the machine gun
Scarred for its life
The passage to the centre of the light
Phosphorescent, the dunes seem alight
The future has passed
The past is the present”

David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more.
Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement.
Howard Stelzer