JUST OUTSIDE
If I call this disc "ingratiating", I don't intend the term with the slightest pejorative tinge. In fact, I was unable to dislodge this thing from my CD player for several days, it was that winning. At a gloss, it's oddly retro, though its points of reference are scarcely more than a decade old: the ambient glitch music of people like Fennesz from the mid to late 90s. Fennesz is an unavoidable referent, I guess, though there's more going on here than that, but Gomberg's general palette is that of rich, ringing, creamy electronics spiced with small bits of noise shrapnel. There's loose repetition, even the odd, pulsing rhythm. And it all sounds so goddamn good. Tracks like "Into", with its snaky little groove, echoing clicks and vestige of a melody just worm their way in, impossible to resist. And "Solo" is positively deadly, sauntering in with perhaps a vague nod to the rhythms in "Are You Experienced?", and tumbling through the room, all manner of detritus attached to its sides, heedless, a little boastful even, exiting in all its hilarious glory, jauntiness intact. Comme is the best potential crossover disc I've heard since Radian's rec.extern. Check it out, get some for your friends.

http://olewnick.blogspot.com/2010/01/dave-barnesrichard-kamermangraham.html

TEXTURA Comme, a generous portion of which was begun after Gomberg moved to Brooklyn in 2005, unspools in perpetual motion, its eight real-time improvisations mini-whirlpools of software-generated textures, Roland Juno synthesizer sounds, and voice elements. Like magnified films of micro-organism activity, the tracks spring to life with all manner of glitch-laden clicks, rattles, and whirrs. Spontaneity rules, as Gomberg lets the raw material develop naturally and with immediacy, the deferential creator content to let a given track travel where it may. The incessant chatter of crackle and hum punctuates glimmering nuclei of electric piano-like burble in percolating pieces of largely beatless design. "Channel" proves especially ear-catching, to some degree because Gomberg adds the rhythmic presence of a kick drum's elastic thump to the track's insectoid chatter, as does the aggressive "Solo" on account of a smeary, fuzz-toned attack that's strongly reminiscent of Oval. Odder still, "Letter" harks back even further in sounding at times like the kind of experiment Miles Davis might have recorded when his interest in Stockhausen was in full bloom.

http://www.textura.org/reviews/gomberg_flyoversound_comme.htm

PARIS TRANSATLANTIC Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based Gomberg works with "analog synthesis, digital treatments, acoustic recordings and custom programming" to generate a kind of semi-structured music which starts from improvisation and successively gets tailored into constantly changing shapes that could be attached to some form of inexpressible "song". Curiously the composer talks about "acoustics in love with their own abstraction", but the main sensation while listening to Comme is one of physicality, although a stylishly anarchic one. The fleshiness of a Roland synthesizer against the volatility of certain emissions, the harmonic kindness that renders several passages slightly more familiar to the ears versus the barely penetrable obscurity of a segment such as "Pair" (easily the best of the CD's eight tracks). This game of contrasts is ultimately what sustains our interest throughout this debut album, a collection that otherwise would risk being overlooked in that congested area of electronica which considers creative peaks undesirable, tending to even out different personalities across a medium-range sameness that does no justice to inquisitive minds like Gomberg's. There are seeds here that need to be carefully watered to grow into beautiful plants, and this young man is perceived to be a sensible gardener.–MR

February 2010

http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2010/02feb_text.html#4

FLASHES OF TIMELESS JOY Based in Brooklyn, Billy Gomberg is a sound artist who incorporates digital treatments, acoustic recordings, programming and analog synthesis to create the totality of his art form. Comme is a stellar example of what extremes are possible when one applies themselves to the task at hand. You can tell this is not just “another” project for the sake of documentation as is too often the case with certain musicians. Rather, Gomberg sounds as if he has really invested a ton into his sound-art. Too involved to be sloppily labelled as ambient, sounds on the record range from trickling, subdued motifs to slabs of squelchy, intermittent drill-like concoctions. Music moves in a rather delicate manner across a landscape that at first sounds barren, but as the album progresses, turns out to be full of lush imagery. Gomberg draws cautiously from his abundant palette of sounds – poking the listeners in the rib one moment, while prodding to investigate with keen attention the next. Progressing through lulls and mid-level peaks, the intensity of the album can only be measured by its subtle adeptness to the surroundings we inhibit during a bleak, grey morning. Comme is that stirring, gentle light that awakes the senses and prepares the mind for the tasks of the day ahead.

http://flashesoftimelessjoy.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/billy-gomberg-comme/