Press
The Wire, March 2005
On Alone In Mounting Static Of Cans, McCoy mercifully schews the space fusion one might have expected from this Mahavishu/Tangerine Dream-style title. He processes samples using the Audiomulch program(which pretty much does what it says on the tin), adding unfussy Hiphop influenced beats. What helps McCoy to rise above the usual clutch-or mulch-of bedroom experimentalists is his musical sensitivity. Even in full mash-up mode, he never allows his work to lose sense of purpose or focus...
Splendid Magazine, June 2005
According to the liner notes, all of Alone's tracks were "extracted from live internet audio streams." With such vague, tenuous information to go on (What devices did Mobile Sound Unit use to get from the original streams to this finished product, and what sort of streams were these in the first place? Contemporary Christian music? News reports from the Czech Republic? Hellacious static?), it's difficult to contextualize the disc, or to grasp what sort of principles may lie behind its experiments. We're blessed/cursed with accepting/rejecting it for what it is (which may in and of itself be the whole point). Like great composers and noisemakers, Mobile Sound Unit understand that electronic ambience doesn't necessarily have to be as discrete and repetitive as possible. These two gentlemen have developed a knack for keeping most of their sounds firmly in the background without sacrificing mobility (hence the name?) -- each piece shifts deftly from scene to scene, and more often than not you'll find that you're in a completely different era on a completely different continent than you were three minutes ago. Gentle strains of Budd and Eno crumble beneath muted looped squeals, which can dissolve into either minced found sound or pulsing electronics that would make Richie Hawtin grin. For all of its variety, however, Alone lacks solid focal points. The journey from form to form is engrossing enough to make one round trip worth taking, but the locales themselves don't develop enough to inspire return visits. -- Phillip Buchan