A Small Prometheus

EMEGO 206 Following his last solo release on Editions Mego in 2010 ‘A Handful of Automation’, Robin Fox returns with ‘A Small Prometheus’, a significant new work which exposes a very different audio world to that previously encountered. In the intervening period Fox has been highly active with his widely acclaimed RGB (red, green, blue) laser show along with a recent collaboration with Atom ™: ‘Double Vision’ which premiered at Unsound festival in 2014. ‘A Small Prometheus’ was developed as a soundtrack to a dance work of the same name co-created with Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake. The outline here was to explore the themes of combustion and heat dissipating in various physical systems.. Greatly extending the language of his creative output Fox constructs a synthesis of electronic and acoustic sources creating a deeply nuanced excursion through space and time, timbre and texture. There is a subtle intensity to the works here, ‘A Pound of Flesh’ is an industrial strength spiralling drone, intoxicating, disorientating, ‘Antlers’ takes the listener on an eleven minute ride through a vortex of pulsing and swirling electronics whilst the title track is an unnerving combination of distressed field recordings, closed mic’d crackle and a foreboding distant pulse. ‘Through Sky’ starts out with a slow menacing rhythmic backbone which hosts an arsenal of small sounds until a certain wind supplants all in an admirable and somewhat haunted exchange. With it’s combination of vast caverns, spiraling counterflows and microscopic investigations Fox has opened up a new world of sound in his personally trajectory and one most unlike others existing anywhere in the present day. A Small Prometheus comes as a limited edition vinyl of 7 tracks whilst two more melodic/rhythmic bonus tracks can be sourced from bandcamp further expanding the rich elaborate sound world of Robin Fox