(2020) Jonas Munk - Minimum Resistance


Review:
The extraordinary command Jonas Munk has achieved as an instrumentalist, sound designer, and producer over the course of two decades is fully captured on Minimum Resistance, a solo release in the truest sense. The forty-six-minute set presents the guitarist operating in ambient mode and thus aligns itself naturally with his Manual rather than Causa Sui output, the latter, of course, already separate for being a band project. Minimum Resistance holds the attention for not only the artistry of its execution but also the subtle contrasts between its ten pieces. Each shares fundamental properties with the others, yet, even while working within a circumscribed palette, Munk still manages to differentiate them. In “Shadows,” for example, some of the guitar’s timbres take on a rather synthesizer-like quality, in contrast to others whose silvery shadings reflect a clear connection to the instrument. It shimmers resonantly in “Sabi,” Munk here maximizing its textural side in metallic figures that sound somewhat like those produced by a steel guitar. During “Eastern Horizon,” on the other hand, clusters of fragments cohere into gently surging fields amidst washes vaguely suggestive of choral exhalations. With the material unfolding at an unhurried, patient pace, the tracks have room to breathe and time to blossom, and, as one such as “Home” illustrates, effect their slow intoxication potently. Characteristic of the release, “Resonance” processes and multiplies the guitar’s natural sound into billowing masses, the whole advancing slowly like some massive galaxial entity. Reverberant meditations such as “Yesterday’s Sky” and the concluding title track show how easily certain pieces on Minimum Resistance could be identified as Manual productions. Common to all ten is a contemplative, reflective mood, each capable of inducing a state of peaceful calm in the listener. Yes, there are passages where increases in dynamics and volume occur, but they’re not so extreme that the overall tone’s compromised. Minimum Resistance isn’t a groundbreaking album. The relaxed ambiance of the project suggests that it aspires to be no more than a document of where he is right now; stated otherwise, the release more impresses as a fine addition to an accumulating body of work that’s still in progress. Regardless of whether it’s broached as a distinct release or as part of a whole, it nevertheless registers as an extremely polished set of ambient guitar artistry.





Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits