The Enormouslessness of Cloud Machines collects seven multi-channel works by composer and sound artist Steve Heimbecker. Some of them, like The Forum for the Alienation of Art, are for use in sound installations. In this case, the piece is a three-minute audio tape that combines bird songs with a sort of spoken manifesto. It is intended to be played continually for the duration of the exhibition. Another work, Spin Cycle, derives rhythmical sounds from the manipulation of a 17-second quadraphonic sound sample of a spinning roulette wheel. A kind of subdued counterpoint is produced here — limited in color, but strikingly hypnotic. Tic Talk #1 is a live quadraphonic work that involves open microphones, delay lines and 4 kitchen timers. The piece lasts as long as the kitchen timers are running. It is no less hypnotic than Spin Cycle, although the timers add a sense of urgency that disembodied sound objects do not. Clearly Heimbecker is an conceptualist! His works are not songs, sonatas or symphonies. Nor, in a way, are they really music. They are more like collages in the spirit of a Kurt Schwitters. The disc’s title is particularly apt because Heimbecker’s pieces have such a profound sense of timelessness. They seem quite capable of going on forever. Heimbecker is a consummate artist capable of simple, unique and beautiful things, and this two disc set is a fine homage to beautiful art.

Canadian sound artist Heimbecker creates unusually spacious and unhurried montages. They may be reflections of his prairie upbringing, but they are assuredly products of his ‘sound sailing’ technique — locating open microphones in the sound space to generate frequency feedback loops as they are processed through digital delays. Voice and breath, gentle environmental sounds, small machines and a sense of humour are key ingredients. Much of it feels boundless, yet electroacoustic composition is rarely so habitable as here.