by Rob Theakston
The second installment of this series, co-issued by the excellent Fallt and Bip-Hop imprints, finds Stephan Mathieu donning his full swing moniker and collaborating with Douglas Benford under his Si-Cut.db alias. Volume two takes the same blueprint as volume one to the collaboration: both artists work on tracks separately (in this case Mathieu contributes two and Benford three) and then collaborate on the rest of the album, trading sounds and processes back and forth until final compositions are realized. The results produce a dense and warm, inviting record which has its moments of academic headiness, but never neglects to acknowledge the humanistic side of microsound music.