Scans
Following in close succession from NNN’s debut Audiobulb release ‘The edges are all wrong’ Scans is a masterpiece in exactly disconnected electronic music. In Kirk’s words … “Starting from the very first track, Scan One is actually the composition that brought this album’s theme to fruition. In the beginning of the year 2011, I had agreed to get an MRI scan to check for a brain tumor that had been removed twice before (recurrent atypical meningioma). The tumor had returned and plans for a third brain surgery were set into motion.
Each of these tracks portrays a particular mental or emotional state throughout the process. From the delivery of the news through the results of the craniotomy; from the radiation treatment’s side effects to the overall issues that arose from this procedure (mild loss of speech/memory, behavioral changes, and simple-partial epileptic seizures with various aura types).
Living from one moment to the next, the recovery from this series of events to feeling something close to “normal” has placed the production of this album at the forefront of my mind for several years. To be able to finally produce the sounds and feelings that I’ve wanted to convey as accurately as I can has been a pure joy.”
During the creation of “Scans”, all sounds were sequenced in Renoise. All sounds were created via Renoise sound generators or from a variety of various waveform production tools. Field recordings from visited locations were also placed sparingly within the tracks to provide additional depth and variation.
• Cover by Kirk Markarian
• Mastered by Volume-Objects
Tracklisting:
- Scan One
- Receiving the News
- Surgery = Presents
- Heading Under
- Getting Back to Reality
- Radiation Treatment
- Enjoy the Magnetic Embrace
- Floor Dust Nap
- Aphasic
- Haze – Hallucinations
- Positivity
- Societal Adaptation
- Contrast Dye
- Dead Flies on the Windowsill
Neuro... No Neuro
Neuro... No Neuro (NNN) is a moniker of the electronic musician Kirk Markarian, an abstract music producer/synthesist, painter, and graphic designer residing in the arid desert of Tucson, Arizona. The moniker “Neuro... No Neuro” was constructed as a secondary persona to create sound and visuals depicting the side effects of several brain surgeries and radiation treatment. NNN’s works are brief glimpses into the buzzing and clicking of medical scans blended with mechanical melodies and ambient moments. “scans” depicts the individual memories and expresses them via divergent methods.
Reviews
Redman
This is some seriously nice work, reminds me of Kiln - Flycatcher, & Xela - Afraid of Monsters. I really like the percussion on “Enjoy the Magnetic Embrace”.
No BS - Just Rock n' Roll
Composed from the emotions or mental states in which Kirk Markarian was at the time of the MRI and other exams that he knew during the treatment of a tumor, the album does not however pour either in the too massive use of metallic tones or small bleeps like an electrocardiogram, or in the implementation of tear-drop effects to pity us. Instead, and notwithstanding titles clearly revolving around the medical subject, we are faced with fourteen rather short pieces (very often less than three minutes), developing a rather fine melodic electronica, based on beautifully crafted melodies and some pleasant rhythms.
Disturbances (between water play and crackling, more robotic sounds and sharper bleeps) can be introduced ("Radiation Treatment", "Positivity", "Contrast Dye)" or, at the other end of the spectrum, arrhythmic songs, operating mainly on the resonance of the sequences of chromatic rises ("Haze - Hallucinations"). So here is well, with Neuro… No Neuro a new head found by Audiobulb, a decidedly highly recommendable label.