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Later, the background atmosphere fades. A pregnant silence hovers, within which one can audit the distinctive envelope of a Melbourne tram. A vaguely futuristic hum courtesy of imported French design, its identity is more prosaic in the realm of Sound Art: trams are what you always hear when cloistered in a small inner city gallery to experience the type of soft and slow sonic event that Ernie presents. Assistance amounts to a curious time capsule for the future, showing not how an environment sounded, but how audiences listened to that environment while listening to music. More than mere ‘field recordings’ (a well abused term) the sonics of Assistance is a complex, unfiltered embrace of making sound into music in a world already full of music in sound.
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