Need Thomas Windham

The debut solo release by Need Windham, founder of concrete agit-prop duo Presocratics (ex-Table of the Elements). A subtle new tape work constructed solely from the critically hated and rejected parts of Presocratics compositions, employment patterns places itself far from the reserved monochrome of its contemporaries, distinguished, with a sly nod to Morton Feldman, through terse probing of tonal degree and compositional identity. Need Windham's fluid pop sensibility glares through the work's structure; indeed, the piece positively emotes -- frustration, joy, shame -- a true political and personal agenda emerges in abstract.
Here Windham goes solo with miniature fragments of sound strewn across lengthy pauses like some kind of soundscape fallout. Small sonic gestures crop up like digital thought-bubbles. Sometimes it plays with barely audible events tickling the perception threshold; other moments in the five unnamed tracks open unexpectedly onto glowing vistas of organ chords, reverberating low end drones, or oozing synthetic sound washes. Lucid and elusive in equal measures. - The Wire