New York artist Richard Garet explores multimedia performance and sound with Areal, a single recorded composition spanning 53 minutes. While there’s no denying that the piece itself is an artful orchestration, Garet’s appropriation of the fabricated electronic instruments used to create this recording are in and of themselves pieces of art, involving manipulated radio transmitters, lo-tech circuits, and mutilated speaker cones. Using these devices, Garet negotiates an audio signal with deliberate agitation. The nodes directing the signal’s course are distressed and distorted while being transmitted and received. It makes for a beautiful score; it starts off sounding like a symphony of glass harmonicas playing the same droning note. As more layers overlap, a deeper sound of big tones slowly move and shift like tectonic plates. Any similarities to percussive noise are created by static interference. Although this work has been compared to that of Phill Niblock and Tim Hecker, followers of Oval and British multimedia composer Philip Jeck's Vinyl Requiem will also find moments of familiarity throughout Areal.