White Noise Carousel
iaminthedirectory

Tracks:

1. ghostsofthecity
2. sensorblowflies
3. kindofforever
4. sleeper
5. memories
6. smaplestirrup
7. iaminthedirectory
8. subconciousrelay
9. koan
10. flatliner
11. e.e.g.
12. laidbare

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Other White Noise Carousel Releases:

Reviews:

Cyclic Defrost

Wow - where to start? This may just be Australian album of the year, and it's only March…!

White Noise Carousel (WNC) are Boyd Karab and Nadav Rayman, based in Melbourne, and iaminthedirectory is their first proper album. This has to be one of the most stunning debuts I've ever heard. It's clear these guys have been honing their craft for years, because there is not a single note or sound that's out of place.

Why is this album so good? Because it captures a genius loci, or spirit of place - that place being Melbourne. The warm synth sounds and spacey Rhodes piano of 'KindofForever' conjure up hot summer evenings in St Kilda - the sun setting over the bay; or strolling along Swanston Street on a sultry Friday night, people sitting at pavement cafes…

'Sleeper' and 'Memories' are two consecutive slices of beatless ambience, redolent of the sounds of the city - the warning pings before the carriage doors open, the subterranean rumble of trains as you climb the escalators, half-heard snatches of conversation as you stand at the traffic lights, disconnected bits of music from office workers' MP3 players, the beep of a security pass over a sensor…

'SubconsciousRelay' is crying out for a remix to unleash its full dancefloor potential. 'Koan' is reminiscent of one of Eno's miniatures from Music for Films.

'SensorBlowflies' and 'iaminthedirectory' both feature spoken-word vocals from actor/playwright Sam Sejavka. Sejavka has a sensuous baritone voice, and his evocative, noir-ish Beat poetry is perfectly soundtracked by WNC.

Melburnians, listen to iaminthedirectory and hear your city celebrated in sound. Everyone else, enjoy some very cool (or should I say warm?) metropolitan electronica, and find out why we love this place so much…!

This is an absolute corker. If a better album comes out of Melbourne this year, I shall eat my (undeniably stylish, green plaid) hat.

Ewan Burke

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Virus Magazine

Explaining White Noise Carousel’s “IAMINTHEDIRECTORY”, is like trying to explain a calm and surreal dream. The type of dream whose coherence and essence evaporate the moment you try to describe them. But since I am a music writer let me attempt to ascribe words to this sound, later we will dance about paintings. White Noise Carousel’s “IAMINTHEDIRECTORY” is a floating subconscious mix of noirish jazz, pulsing embryonic analogue synths and random applications of noise. A rare and necessary complete respite from the temporal, always avaliable, information obsessed world. 

When sleep drug and dream aid Rozerim sponsors a band, it will be White Noise Carousel. But until then Melbourne based electronic duo, White Noise Carousel will continue to provide music for art installations, animation and remixes for Australia’s favorite anti-capitalist band Snog. Comfortable with the lack of restrictions the experimental/advant garde community provides, WNC aren’t beholden to any one genre. Which means although the music is always coma calm, the sound shifts from chill out to early Tangerine Dream like psychedelic ambient synthmusic, to smooth jazz to John Cage like sound experiments. 

Always placing the emphasis and value on the ambience rather than the song allows random and sometimes erratic shifts in sound. Which allows “KindofForever” to switch from ambient to smooth jazz with only a lazy kick drum as a segue. Or allow the spoken word of Sam Sejavka backed by 60’s era beat jazz to give way to a scraping metal that would make Neubauten or Foetus proud on “SensorBlowflies”. The music on “IAMINTHEDIRECTORY” is not about the song but about the mood. And the mood is consistent from the first sound of breaking glass on “GhostsintheCity” to the piano jazz of 
“Laidbare” all is weightless, floating, subconcious surrealism. An hour escape that is as satisfying as it is intangible. 

White Noise Carousel’s “IAMINTHEDIRECTORY” is an acquired taste of restraint and atmosphere. But for those who can embrace it’s retreat of calm will be rewarded with an encompassing womb of sound that will restore and refresh your senses for other music. If you ever have contemplated consciousness and it’s expansive qualities, I highly reccommend White Noise Carousel’s “IAMINTHEDIRECTORY”. Now excuse me while I dance Andy Warhol’s Campbells Soup Can and Marilyn Monroe. 

Michael A.Wozny

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Vital Weekly - Issue 551 - Week 44

 Hardly a week passes without music from down under, and one of the reasons that so many people make music down there is that it is expensive to import music from the rest of the world, so why not produce it yourself? Here White Noise Carousel is the new thing, a duo of Nadav Rayman and Boyd Korab, who have been playing together since 1994. First as a chill outfit for techno parties, but also creating music for theatre, animation and installations. Armed with samplers, vintage synthesizers and found sound, White Noise Carousel have nothing to do with white noise. Their sound is hard to pin down to a specific style, as it's rather a mixture of many styles. There is techno like textures, drum 'n bass, trip hop and such like, all spiced up with some ambient synthetic patterns and more experimental sounds of an undefinable nature. For die hard lovers of say techno or ambient this must be an absolute drag, but I rather enjoyed it. It's altogether quite a cinematic trip from the urban places where there is joy and life to the Australian dessert where there quietness and contemplation, or even a jazz piano, such as in 'LaidBare'. I am not sure if the intention was to make such as overall record, or whether this is 'just' a collection of songs, I couldn't tell. But for once it's a mixture that makes sense, and delivers a highly varied and highly enjoyable album. (FdW)

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ThreeDworld
Friday, 20 October 2006

Melbourne-based ambient electronic duo White Noise Carousel (aka Nadav Rayman and Boyd Korab) first emerged as a chill-out act, before focusing upon theatre, animation and installation work, their primary staple for the last few years.

This curiously-titled debut album iaminthedirectory certainly seems particularly informed by the aforementioned creative outlets, with much of the abstracted minimal electronic soundscapes coming across like a soundtrack to a film that hasn’t happened yet. There are certainly some pronounced leanings towards jazz here, particularly on the atmospheric soul-meets-harsh electronics of Smaple Stirrup, which blends delicate jazzy piano accents with warm ambient drones and contorted digital processing in one of this collection’s most blissful offerings.

Perhaps the most intriguing moments come in the form of the two collaborations with Melbourne-based spoken word artist Sam Sejavka (portrayed by Michael Hutchence in Dogs In Space), the sinister SensorBlowflies bringing the harsh fluorescent tube-lit glare of the 4am city into gritty noir detail and at the same time casting the duo’s stripped-back electronics in perhaps their best setting.

While the sense occasionally creeps in that much of the more sparse and stripped-down material would work best alongside visual elements, this is certainly effective headphone cinema.