To relieve his busy, bursting brain UK synthesist Ian Boddy takes to the concert hall. Beginning by reinitializing each venue into a neutral zone he sets about coloring the still air in music, motion and meaning. Modulations IV (178:02) features five such adventures. So magical are these recordings that it would be hard not to feel regret at missing out on their original stagings.
Not meant to reconfirm what is already known Boddy's pentad of performances travels someplace different, somewhere more imaginative - and takes us along for the ride. Providing proficient preludes, summits and resolutions for his sonic stories listeners are left with a sense of having traversed some great distance over the duration of these impressive live sets.
Celebrating modular synth system excellence Boddy makes owning such a contraption look cool. His demonstrated proficiency, collected by the Modulations series of releases, has reset expectations throughout this field. The pressurized intros and aural misdirections extend beneath a gradual disturbance of atmosphere, texture and tone. When his efforts deepen and darken into minor key desolation, it feels fascinatingly bleak. If there is any hope to be found in the brief forbidding soundscape, then it will be in our connection to fellow attendees adrift.
Shifting convincingly between states, as witnesses hang on to every dissonant decibel Boddy dials up the heat and basks in it. With sequencers set to infinity the sessions escalate, then light out in expressive fanciful flights. Among sparks stirring so strongly on charged currents these spirited passages build on the mysterious motoring meter of echoing notes. Rushing outward through space, then decelerating to a cool calm we move in a realm of endless invention - suggesting a universe as large as the one within this artist. However, it is in the remarkable electronic dispatch delivered over the spacey Star's End airwaves that this collection ascends furthest into the poetic regions.
Having survived six times previously the ordeal of completing a full evening at Philadelphia's The Gatherings Concert Series, only to then realize (just a few hours later) an all new 60 minutes of original material for the late-night radio broadcast, on 22 October 2023 Boddy again embraced this demanding enterprise and conjured a series of interconnected, innovative vignettes expressly for the individual receivers of this rare radio transmission. Conceived and received differently than by a theater audience (where aural ideas circulate easily between the assembled fans and observers) more sensitive recipients will find this beamed segment possessing the album's most moving moments.
Presenting a string of exceptional 2023-2024 recitals Modulations IV is captivating in all its instrumental innovation, stark revelations and ethereal beauty. An intelligence extending beyond the cold logic of machines, Boddy consistently generates a quiet drama of grand ideas and dark imaginings, in real time, for all to see and hear - in another memorable gift to this discipline and its devotees.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 26 June 2025
