Francisco Lopez/Amy Denio - Belle Confusion 00

All Music Guide

The second release in Francisco López' absolute label is his collaboration with avant-pop singer and multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio. The two artists toured the United States during the summer of 2000, and this release incorporates some live recordings from the tour, as well as additional material recorded elsewhere, including the famous resonant (and empty) water cistern in Port Townsend, WA, with a natural 45-second delay, where Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Band has also recorded. Denio fans should be alerted that although the basic sound material for everything on this album is her voice, this is much more a López album than anything that Denio has done previously, and nothing on this album is instantly recognizable as voice-based. Instead, the album sounds like layered drones, similar to much of López' other work. The layers are more varied here, often accumulating three or four distinct layers at a time. López and Denio vary their intensity and duration as well, peaking around... the halfway mark with metallic resonant drones and a throbbing industrial pulse, fading to quiet, high-pitched sustained tones at the hour mark, and closing with a quiet foghorn-like boom in a white noise fog. The dynamic range of this album is quite large. If the volume level on the listener's stereo is merely comfortable during the loudest sections, the quiet parts will be inaudible. This range, together with the variety in the layers, are the hallmark of this album, a continuation of López' investigations of the inner sonic properties, but most likely a sidebar and a diversion for Denio. - Caleb Deupree, All Music Guide Read more Less