sigma editions

K is a collaborative work by Dion Workman and Rohan Thomas constructed during 1999 and 2000 while both artists were living in The Netherlands.

Originally sourced from mini disc feedback the physical nature of K's sound lies, for the most part, at the higher end of the frequency range. Its fragile clips and tones are assembled with a delicate randomness that avoids repetitive rhythms yet has a strong sense of development and direction.

After the initial impression of the work as ultra minimal, electronic in its sources and coldly calculated in its execution, what unfolds is a work heading elsewhere - a kind of launching forth of sound. The pieces are mediated just enough to allow for a sense of compositional logic to appear while sidestepping the fuzziness that is a pitfall in some process based work. This is the artfulness within the work: the artist creating a tear or slit in the enfolding firmament like tapping a well-spring, but holding the work within the threshold of listenability.

K is a sound arena of certain modes belonging to expression: speed and rest, sonorous apparitions, a sense of the inside and the outside, a holding off and a letting go. These events, tied for the listener to memory and emotion, activate a new life for each listening. At certain volumes the sounds effect on the body has the power to transfer and inhabit organs in ways not often felt. K produces from the most unlikely of sources a new form of folded landscape art untied to the more familiar tenants of what we have come to know as soundscape.

- David Haines / Todd Dealer, 2000

The two tracks on here have the feel of some of Bernhard Günter's music but made with a tingly sound palette closer to someone like Ryoji Ikeda. The first track is barely even there - the silence dominates the piece, as faint whistles fade in and out of the sparse mix. The results are extremely minimal - and not exactly easy to listen to....Parts of the second track remind me of how my ears feel after a loud rock concert - a dense but very muffled drone envelops everything, like a thick blanket around my head, while the faintest high-pitched whistles move in and out of audible range. The feeling is very claustrophobic, and the music is felt subliminally more than explicitly, since even at full volume the CD sounds can't overpower the ambient noises surrounding the listener. Though mostly a very quiet piece, the sustained tone held at the 9 minute mark has the same effect on the listener as a slightly friendly water torture might, as the tone builds and builds into a distant hum that seems to be burrowing it's way through the listener's ears.
- Carlos Pozo, Angbase, Issue 6, 2002

Two tracks of minimal tones and silences by Dion Workman (of Thela) and Rohan Thomas. They keep things asymmetrical, non-rhythmic and random, yet the pieces progress in deliberate, slow movements, one step at a time. The high pitched whistles change depending on your position in the room, the low rumblings fit perfectly in your ears, the delicate crackles and soft tones play gently around the soundfield... and for all this K has much in common with the microsound experiments of Ryoji Ikeda, Mika Vainio and others of that ilk...[T]hese are two interesting pieces that, at the very least, create new, minimal environments in your living space.

- Richard di Santo, Incursion.org, Issue 33, 5 August 2001