AllMusic February 2007
“…what strikes most in Spore is the wealth of extended techniques the flautist has developed. One thinks of John Butcher and Axel Dörner's microscopic investigation of their instruments (sax and trumpet, respectively), but Anderson's soundworld seems even more alien than theirs. The album consists of three main pieces, two of them subdivided into parts. Each section focuses on a technique, computer setup or approach; the concluding "Leach," the longest piece by far, finds Anderson abandoning thematic research for a holistic application of her discoveries. The result is a gripping piece of subatomic recorder virtuosity. You could listen again and again to Spore, trying to figure out what she does and how she does it, or you could simply accept Anderson's soundworld for the enigma that it is and let yourself be transported, menaced and ravished by it. A very surprising and innovative album.”
François Couture
The Wire February 2007
“…a dominating presence in performance. Posed behind what resembles some bastardised periscope, her precise jolts, staps and finger taps evidence her strategic exploitation of the instrument's potential…leaving in its wake an explosive spark and splutter of realtime processed audio…the instrument and its devolved signal interlocking in a twisted and tightly coiling feedback loop.…claustrophobic, with an intimacy that's almost overwhelming…a sense of intense, even uncomfortable closeness.”
Lawrence English
Cyclic Defrost February 2007
It’s difficult to imagine the sounds as woodwind if you didn’t know better. The piercing pitch makes it seem alive, also the way in which she seems to double it at times, playing tricks on your ears, making you wonder if its not a field recording of some strange colony of insects. Spore is a difficult album, aside from the incredible pitches she reaches, it’s also an album that dips away from earshot, reappearing in a totally different and unique realms. On Spore Anderson is primarily exploring her amazing contrabass recorder (at times on a microscopic level) though also other woodwind instruments as well as some processing via Max MSP. Though it’s quite difficult to tell the electronics from her violent gestures on her instrument. Abrupt gasps, pops, strange squiggles, rubbing, scratching and gurgles get spat out and intermingled, as air is trapped, pushed in and sucked out of the recorder. It’s an incredibly different sound world; somehow you get a sense of the sheer physicality of the instrument, whilst also having little understanding of what is actually occurring. It’s incredibly sparse, very non-musical and quite fragmented in the series of gestures and sounds she elicits, there’s plenty of space and literally anything can happen at any given moment. As soon as you press play you give yourself over to Anderson’s vision. Despite a feeling of precision it’s very difficult to determine how she has made her compositional decisions. What’s incredible is the control she exudes over pitch and her ability to meld with the electronics into strangely pitching frequencies, creating an at times jarring, niggling, intricate and peculiar work of electro acoustic strangeness that is as beguiling as it is threatening. I’ve never heard anything like it.
Bob Baker Fish
Vital Weekly November 2006
"Australia's Cajid label always takes us by surprise and always seems to be treating us with new musicians, and surprising[ly] many of them are female...[Spore] comes off [as] a highly interesting form of electro-acoustic music that is most of the times highly vibrant and dynamic. Sometimes the sounds [move] in all directions, bounce back to earth and shoot into space, but at other times things are slow and peaceful, such as in the last section of title piece, entitled 'leach'. No doubt derived from many hours of improvisation, this is cut short to and collated into what is on this CD, which is a fine combination of onkyo and electro-acoustic music. Great stuff!"
Frans De Waard
