Review // Patrick Gryst – The Auchestron Vol. 1 (No.1), Summer/Autumn 1966

Words: Raymond Tani ( @solemnland )

The minimal and/or the simple in music often receives short shrift in its appraisal and in many instances that seems a fair reading of the music at hand. Not so, with respect to the new release by Patrik Gryst. The approach time to emotional engagement on the first piece ‘Dark Clouds Looming/Triumph of the Sun’ is negligible as this listener found a sense of location and mood in the opening seconds.

It would seem an abbreviated or economical intro to a recording but Gryst has created music with the emotional imprint of the experience of Autism and if the more typical embellishments of electronic music are not present, it seems to the musicians credit as he brings artistic merit to bear with a purposeful directness. In following tracks the feeling of listening to reportage, the sense of ‘this is how it is, this is the view from the inside’ pervades and given the conceptual subject, this listener was, if not beguiled then perhaps transfixed with the musical addressing of the artist’s experience.

Grysts’ recording stands heads above much of contemporary electronic music and one reason is, to a degree, its similarity with cinema verité. We are afforded an artists viewpoint into a private world and though we need not make an emotional investment, that view is rewarding. Recommended.