The building blocks of 'Together Alone, Together Apart' by New Zealand's Richard Francis are 'sound moments': sonic interludes of a dozen or so seconds of environmental sound, whose subtle arrangements and cross-contaminations are the springboard for the compositions found here. Given the quiet volumes, sounds at the threshold of audibility are presumably those which have captured his imagination. A soft hiss and variable low end frequency introduce the first untitled track, with small crackles, glitches and echoes sporadically breaking through. The second is considerably more dramatic, with a flapping rhythm emerging from a grounded hiss like a moth's wings beating against glass. The final track is almost undetectable, even with headphones, and strengthens the connections between Francis's work and the reductive strategies of Bernhard Gunter or John Hudak. Here, swells of deep frequencies rise and fall along a fog of unsettled static, concluding a refined and highly recommended album.
THE WIRE 286, December 2007

"onkyo ok" is composed of recordings made during Roel's tour to Japan in summer 2001 (along with Frans De Waard and Peter Duimelinks). Where Kiyoshi Mizutani's 'Yokosawa-iri' CD (cmr1) uses primarily rural sound sources from a selected area, 'onkyo ok' may strike a special chord and familiarity with anyone who has visited Japan's urban areas, cities and outlying regions. Various components of the rich Japanese soundscape (to name a few: pachinko parlours, train crossings, crows, electrical machines, people) have been captured, abstracted (or not), blended and re-composed creating unique sonic snapshots of this beautiful and at times bewildering country. The sound pieces are relatively constant over time (Roel's characteristic silences are at a minimum) containing numerous complimentary sources simultaneously building together into broadband structures, then falling away to focus on various seperate objects and events. This album serves as a beautiful document and expression of the ever-changing Japanese acoustic environment as it was at the beginning of the twenty first century.

Architectural Commentaries is comprised of five tracks. The first three pieces, entitled 'Architectural Commentaries 1-3', are some of Marc's most recent compositions arranged in 2001 using basic material recorded from 1990-2000 in various global locations. Taking title, sleeve images and sound together we are left with new audible environments for architectural structures; jets of forced air and amplified nothing, distant machinery and tiny bites of frequency, faded and cut together to create beautifully atmospheric soundscapes. Track 4 was previously released on RLW's 'Tulpas' 5 CD set (Selektion 024) and was constructed using source material from Ralf Wehowsky. Track 5 was composed in 1992 as a soundtrack to accompany the video Der Raum by Torsten Grosch - stills of which feature on the CD sleeve. The album permits a smooth flow between Marc's earlier and more recent work and shows the artists' continuing exploration into the depth and dimensions of sound recording.