HAPTIC

Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

RELEASE DATE: November 22, 2024 on all digital listening platforms

For Haptic’s latest release, the group has once again contracted to a trio. What would eventually become Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions began with discussions and email exchanges in preparation for a recording session at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) in April 2022. In lieu of a fixed score or set agenda for the session, a wide range of possible models from which to draw inspiration were discussed, particularly focusing on those records that had formed each member’s earliest musical influences.

Ultimately, however, the finished album would have only the most tenuous connection to these original sources. Taking the ESS session as a point of departure, the individual pieces gradually evolved through a lengthy process of distillation and concentration. Rough mixes were assembled and exchanged back and forth among the group, reviewed, and discussed. The decision was made to extract certain aspects of the initial recordings and focus on refining particular sounds, moods, and compositional approaches. Various new elements were incorporated—field recordings, additional electronics, piano—and, after further consideration, usually taken away again. Over an extended period, as the individual tracks were mixed, remixed, and revised in search of consensus, the process of accretion and reduction resulted in an abraded, polished surface, richly and subtly textured but shorn of ornament.

Serving as a brief introduction and setting the stage for what is to follow, “Proscenium” is built around a warped cassette tape of improvised piano. This recording is combined with a horn part, drawn from an arrangement of a work by Guillaume de Machaut, carefully rearranged to align with the piano recording. The scene shifts abruptly as “Returning” begins. The sound of a restless crowd provides an anticipatory interlude before the curtain rises on the distended, slow-motion dissolution of a fragment of lush orchestral music. The album’s final piece, “Abasement,” sustains its hovering stasis for an impossibly long, suspended moment, punctuated with precisely deployed bass drum hits that give the piece a sense of form, mass, and almost glacial momentum. Alternately transparent and opaque, Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions beautifully articulates Haptic’s deeply considered approach to recorded sound and acts as a fitting summation of their career to date.

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Catalog:: LINE_156

Format:: digital

Edition:: open edition

Release:: November 2024

Tracklist:

1. Proscenium (03:01)
2. Returning (18:11)
3. Abasement (22:31)

HAPTIC:
Steven Hess
Joseph Clayton Mills
Adam Sonderberg

Recorded by Haptic w/ additional recording by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago.
Mixed by Mills / Sonderberg
Final mix at Vozdvizhenskoe Manor
Mastered by Tomas Korber at Messfehler

Research and development: OWB, FP

This is Haptic recording number sixteen.

Known for complex, textured works that can veer from delicate minimalism to dense, overwhelming noise, Haptic combines attention to the nuances of sonic detail with conceptual rigor and restless experimentation. Formed in Chicago in the spring of 2005 by Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg, Haptic initially incorporated a different fourth member for each concert, intended to send each performance in unpredictable and challenging directions. Over the course of two decades, the trio’s practice has expanded to include collaborations with dancers and filmmakers, soundtracks, installations, and unique site-specific performances.

Their recorded output has been marked by a similar breadth and eclecticism, ranging from the meticulously assembled intricacies of Scilens (2011) to the almost monochromatic hush of Abeyance (2014). Collaboration has also remained a key element of much of Haptic’s discography. The group’s debut LP, The Medium, consisted of two side-long performances with Tony Buck (The Necks) and composer Olivia Block, respectively; Ten Years Under the Earth, released in 2017, was recorded in a cave in Kentucky as a quartet with percussionist Tim Barnes; and 2022’s Ladder of Shadows once again featured contributions from Olivia Block as well as Salvatore Dellaria (Sonderberg’s frequent collaborator in Dropp Ensemble).

HAPTIC BANDCAMP

REVIEWS OF
Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

One could accurately characterize the entire timeline of the Chicago-identified trio Haptic as a shift between the poles of outreach and interiority. Originally formed expressly to perform live, with guests, extended episodes of geographic separation brought out their latent tendencies towards audience-free interaction. The title tips the hand of this recording, which can be considered an experiential confrontation with destiny. For while the musicians added to, subtracted from, processed and otherwise manipulated sourced from a one-day session at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, they kept coming back to the original sounds. Which is not to say that it sounds like what they played; rather, what you hear was fileted from the original sound capture, dredged through field recordings and room sounds, and then shaken until only a light dusting of influence remained. There are long stretches where it sounds like a rank of long electronic tones tucked behind a cloud bank of room sound, and this immateriality makes the choice to release it only as a digital download feel like an artistic choice to make format congruent with content.
—Dusted Magazine
Oceans of sound flowing beautifully with and against the tide, combined with sounds that literally fill your ears and overwhelm your senses. Damn, I love this album! You never know where it’s going. All you can do is float along, and see where you end up. I expect great things from Los Angeles’ LINE and I’ve never been let down – especially today. Sail away on this one, and you’ll never want to go back.
—citr.ca
Friday Five: Nov. 22, 2024
—themoderns.blog
Landing on Richard Chartier’s LINE after a series of releases for Flingco, Entr’acte and Notice, Chicago trio Haptic work like sculptors on their latest offering, turning synth sounds, field recordings, piano and other instrumentation into droning lower case saturations.

‘Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions’ started life as a spread of ideas, where Haptic’s Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mill and Adam Sonderberg prompted each other to dig into their musical history and present the records that formed their earliest memories. But while these examples helped guide the initial session at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio back in 2022, the music evolved rapidly as the group began to work into the stems, putting together rough mixes and adding new elements where needed, before removing them again. Hess, Clayton and Sonderberg kept on mixing, remixing and revising until the original compositions were “richly and subtly texture, but shorn of ornament” and the results speak for themselves.

There’s no aesthetic prettiness on show here; traces of instruments are almost perceptible at times, but everything’s been rubbed down until its source material almost vanishes. Opener ‘Proscenium’ was based on a warped tape of improvised piano, but you only really notice the fluttered chimes if you’re really tuning in. What’s more evident is Guillaume de Machaut’s resonant horn part, that the trio rearranged to match the piano. ‘Returning’ is even murkier, an orchestral moan that’s drowned beneath waves of tape hiss, and the side-long ‘Abasement’ dilates the timeline once more, punctuating the durational soundscape with subtle bass drum hits.
—boomkat.com
There’s a solemn, almost austere beauty to Haptic’s “Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions”, a title that hints at the chain reactions set in motion by small decisions – a fitting metaphor for an album born from threads of collective improvisation, then reshaped, stripped down, and reimagined. Recorded at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, the album emerges from fragments of conversation, emailed inspirations, and the ambiance of the studio itself. The result is a hypnotic tableau where each track slowly unfolds like scenes in a film, opaque and restrained, yet rich with an almost tactile texture.

“Proscenium”, the album’s entry point, wavers between eras as a warped, improvised piano performance interlaces with a horn line borrowed from a 14th-century Guillaume de Machaut piece. This careful pairing of historical reference and avant-garde subtlety is a signature Haptic touch, weaving time and tradition into their minimalist approach. Haptic’s sound, in its reduction, feels monumental, as though the very air between notes is weighted with significance.

In “Returning”, a collage of orchestral fragments dissolves in slow-motion, stretching time to near stasis. We hear what could be a restless crowd, the anticipation of something that almost arrives but retreats at the last moment. And “Abasement”, with its bass drum punctuations, drags forward with an aching inevitability, a meditation on form and mass that seems intent on freezing time itself.

Haptic – Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg – began as a group of friends experimenting in Chicago in 2005, each bringing a unique voice and influence. Known for their collaborative work and atmospheric installations, Haptic’s practice has always blended sonic detail with conceptual depth. The trio has worked with filmmakers, dancers, and other experimental artists, recording everywhere from caves to dance studios, and this release feels like the culmination of that restless exploration. Like their other works – “Scilens”, “The Medium”, and “Abeyance” – “Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions” invites listeners to engage with the negative space, the pauses and breaths between sounds.

It’s an album as much about absence as presence, where listening is almost an act of participation, of meeting Haptic halfway in their strange, spatial world.
—chaindlk.com

HAPTIC

Tracklist:

REVIEWS OF Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

REVIEWS OF
Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions