"Medulla depicts the vulnerability of our senses when our whole body and mind are starting to fall into unconsciousness. Ambiences are divined revealing phantasmagoric melodies sometimes taking the shapes of ghostly free jazz or even mystic Indian air. The phantomatic atmospheres contains electro-acoustic elements and let immerge from their elusive soundscapes the harmonic presence of guitars, saxophone, trumpet and violin, to intertwine the impressionism of dreamlike dimensions and the concrete beauty of what can sometime be reality." - Jean-Francois Fecteau, Le Vestibule

"Crossing a number of genre boundaries - modern classical piano, jazz improv, electronica - Transient v Resident aim to create improvised, electronic music which retains its freshness over time by carefully chosen sounds and structures. I think they achieve their aim, and expect to be listening to this album in years to come." - Ampersand Etcetera.

"Medulla is the second studio CD by Transient v Resident (Martin Archer and Chris Bywater). It was produced four years after Electrical Shroud. The duo had a lot of time to evolve. While their late-1990s music focused on long, atmospheric electronic improvisations, Medulla is somewhat much closer to Archer's solo works (Winter Pilgrim Arriving, Pure Water Construction). The electronics are now firmly anchored in the electroacoustic realm. Various chance and xenochronous processes were applied to the compositions -- both musicians supplying chunks of material that were combined to form pieces. Instrumentalists are heard on four of the six tracks, at times as part of the source material (Derek Saw's trumpet in Claviform), in other cases as live performers soloing over the pre-existing electronic track. This technique yielded the best results. Benjamin Bartholomew provided beautiful acoustic guitar in Hispid and Kamalbir Singh a lengthy violin solo influenced by classical Indian music. The latter piece stands aside. First, it is much longer than the rest of the material (34 minutes). Second, it is the closest thing to "old" Transient v Resident. More dreamy, ambient, it was created through live improvisation. Singh added his part later, along with some hand percussion by Bywater. Medulla represents a big step forward for TvR. It leaps out of new-age electronica to fully embrace avant-gardist sound art." - Francois Couture

"A totally unclassifiable entity...a release which deserves more listenings yet." - Alan Freeman, Audion

"Electroacoustic composer Martin Archer uses melodic fragments and rhythmic patterns, but his music seldom builds to a climax or resolves itself in any sort of superficially coherent fashion. Instead, Archer offers the attraction of unusual timbres and textures, and an introspective atmosphere that mixes fragile, sometimes austere beauty with the stuff of hallucination and nightmare - quite often in the same piece. Archer's compositional processes, on this and other of his recordings, involve a bewildering assortment of intuitive studio additions, subtractions and manipulations of source material (emphasis on the "intuitive"). Somewhat tongue in cheek (one would hope), Archer relates that the foundation of one piece on Medulla was generated by "kicking the violin around the studio floor and occasionally poking it with a bow."
This latest collaboration between Archer and longtime associate Chris Bywater (I'm assuming that Bywater is the "Transient," and Archer the "Resident") features the thirty-eight minute "Culm," which starts out with tribal hand-percussion and a dense cloud of mysterioso electronic effects, and then after roughly half its length introduces a haunting, raga-like theme featuring Kamalbir Singh on violin. Fans of Popol Vuh (especially "In The Gardens of Pharao") might notice parallels in the first half of "Culm," but the introduction of the raga element is a totally unexpected delight. With co-credits for electronics and processing, as well as sopranino sax (Archer) and percussion (Bywater), the two principals are certainly capable of going it alone -- as illustrated by the short but gorgeously ethereal "Fimbriata." But Archer's preference is for collaborative composition, and on Medulla he also solicits, treats and integrates recorded submissions from trumpeter Derek Saw, electric/acoustic guitarist Benjamin Bartholomew and the previously mentioned Singh. Saw's poignantly wispy muted trumpet line is inserted, to excellent effect, into what Archer accurately represents as an "electronic rainforest" on "Claviform," the CD's opening track.
Elsewhere, on the somewhat more aggressive "Squamosa," the end product is the sum of two independent Archer organ tracks, combined by Bywater, who also adds percussion and processing. Then Bartholomew's multiple electric guitar lines are superimposed, together with a touch of Saw's trumpet. Like much of Archer's work, the initially inpenetrable mass of sound resolves itself as it develops, and ultimately becomes another satisfying aesthetic statement. 'Organic' is not a word normally applied to electronic music, but with Archer, it seems to fit." - Bill Tilland, BBC website

"...as eventful as film...there are moments of beauty here...an authoritative claim in this sonic territory" - Artscene

"You can never see the whole thing at once, nor discern what direction it might be heading in...constant inventiveness and hunger for experimentation...they sweat buckets in their tireless efforts to keep the music perpetually surprising... the usual high standard of attention to detail, craft and production...even the smallest squeal and buzz is as finely crafted as a piece of cathedral masonry" - Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector

At once ambient and unnerving, this is a structured album that at least appears to have been pre-planned to cause disassociation. Occasionally it settles into a dreamscape, but then tips over into the abyss of a darker vision. Wonderful. - Progress Report