COELACANTH THE GLASS SPONGE CD 23five 004 reviewed by Jon Dale for Signal To Noise, issue 32, Winter 2004 Coelacanth pulse further into the abstract. The duo of Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes, their second disc The Glass Sponge uses sound as allegory for the object in question. Documents of various performances 2001 and 2002 are chewed through manipulations and banks of effects to resemble a slurried fog of haze, rendering sources delirious: a vision of the seabed caught through night fog, punctured by abject scratchings. Chasse's fondness for field recordings rears its head throughout the recording, most significantly in "The Hexactinellidae," where a bank of cicadas and insects are wrought in spatial disarray, multiplying in volume and panning across the stereo spectrum. If Coelacanth's intent was to abstractly invoke the glass sponge of the title, then full marks: their compositions are exquisitely rendered and shot through with electricity. www.signaltonoisemagazine.com