COELACANTH THE CHRONOGRAPH The Wire #212, October 2001 Outer Limits by Will Montgomery This is the first release from California's Coelacanth, who comprise lower case composer Loren Chasse and The Wire's own Jim Haynes (who can be found hosting this very page). "I rust things," says Haynes, of his activities outside of the outer limits. That's an apt enough description of the mouldering, unstable music on The Chronograph. The pieces are edited improvisations -- treatments of private and public performances built around layered loops. Chasse and Haynes create a thick, murky soup, dense with activity. Drones undergrid the action, though the duo exhibit a preference for soft amorphous interventions coating them. The most atmospheric piece is the alluringly titled "How Bodies Become Phosphorescent," where tense puttering sounds and an exhausted whine serve to produce feelings of great tension. Thoroughly distressed, the album lives as a fragile concretisation of decay.