Thanks to everyone for the positive response on
my last reviews. I got over a dozen great e-mails
about it and they were all wonderful, and I have to
say I haven't been so enthused about the musical
discussion on this list in years. Excellent. So, more.
And I even gave the reviews a name in the hopes
it will become a regular thing with all the
music I end up buying. So this time I reviewed eight
new full-lengths and two old classics that I want to
turn on to people who might have missed them or encourage
people to dig out of their files.
Also sorry for the length of the Quench review.
I meant to improve it and cut it down, but I'm
just feeling lazy at the moment. Oh well.
Feel free to past these reviews around or
repost them, just please credit SGR A*.
-
Quench: A Journey Into Electronix
CD, U-Cover, 2000
1999 was a banner year for the Dutch production
team Funckarma, two brothers who first three
"Parts" 12"s were perhaps the first significant new step
post-Chiastic Slide in the precision engineering
school of Artificial Intelligence primarily populated
and explored by Autechre. Just as "Chiastic Slide"
represented a vast leap in intricacy and the emotional
quality of deep, expansive IDM laden with all sorts of
unique samples, sounding much like a weeping car
production line, Funckarma's work took another leap,
back towards abstraction, with tracks that instead of
continually ascending towards a glorious, exiquisitely
mapped out peak, lived and breathed, with beats, sounds,
ideas bouncing and rotating around each other, an
attempt at a sort of structureless rhythm development.
However, it seems to go without saying that this sound
is an extremely difficult one to innovate or convince one's
listeners in, and Funckarma's abstract, new conception
is treading an even finer line (witness Funkstorung's remix
of "Spatial Convolution" which, instead of reworking the track,
closes off all the angles and reduces it to a base pattern).
I find it hard to believe the same team responsible for the Parts
12"s, which were perhaps the best work done in the Ae/Fng
genre (including Ae and F'ng), could be the same masterminds
(and according to the scenesters, they are) behind Quench's
new album "A Journey Into Electronix". The album seems modeled
after two IDM classics: the afore-mentioned "Chiastic Slide" in
the twittering beat specs, the submerged beautiful aesthetic
ambient synth line beneath a pile of gargling, chomping mechanical
monstrosities, and the constant upward 6/4 and 6/8 structuralism,
and also Reload's absolute masterpiece "A Collection of Short Stories"
in the dark pessimistic future atmosphere it tries to create while
letting the sun shine through periodically on tracks. These are two
of IDM's best albums that have proven more intimidating than
inspiring: so few artists have done work in the Autechre or Reload
style that has garnered real praise, and Quench have perhaps
bitten off more than they could chew. The problem I have with this
album is the tracks are too inconsistent and too spastic, and
quite often can be easily reduced to three or four clanging, warped
distorted beats with the occasional vicious scratch, and when
a track seems to be going in the right direction it only lasts
about forty seconds before entirely changing once again. The
beauty of late Autechre (whether or not you like it, you have
to appreciate it) is the way they build upon a very basic,
often harsh tone by constantly adding new elements swirling
on top until the track hits a glorious crescendo, and how
like any musical chord the sounds created end up as more
than just a sum of their respective parts. Quench's disc
has none of this: the tracks don't evolve, they don't work
like a snowball, constantly accumulating. They instead
are like stop and start traffic: just when you think you're
getting somewhere, you're back in gridlock. There are
twenty, thirty second portions of this record that work
incredibly well, but the tracks not only fail to develop,
they fail to captivate due to their stuttering, off-tempo
nature. I think a producer should always ask themselves
if a new sound introduced adds to the mix or is just
an attempt to sound cutting edge or just add a sound,
and I don’t think Quench took that question into account.
Emanated
CD, Emanate, 1998
Electronic music is dimensional, and this compilation doesn't
take advantage of that. What's my problem with it? The tracks
are in a horrible IDM grey area, and that area is downtempo.
There are two types of effective electronica: uptempo, four on
the floor stuff (which covers most of Detroit, Chicago and
Germany) and notempo, home listening background supplementation
(which covers FAX, most ambient and Clicks and Cuts style
microsound). Emanated falls in the middle. Electronic music
is a Kierkegaardian Either/Or situation, and this comp won't
commit. Most of the tracks dwell in Abbott's Flatland: they have
no depth, they are long and meandering, and the sounds all
ring hollow because they don't accomplish either the rhythmic
captivation of high BPM (see Detroit, Chicago and Germany) and
they don't create a soundwash atmosphere you can fall into
(see FAX, Microsound, Cologne's better output). In Brinkmann
or Burger or SND the minimalism is not an issue because of
how excellently the rhythm takes it places the sounds cannot
take themselves, and in FAX it doesn't matter if they have the
same sound going for eighteen minutes because it just gets
deeper, lusher and accomodates most reflective situations,
be they in your head or in Earth's atmosphere. These tracks
being undeveloped is not the problem. Their flawed structure
of being techno tracks at 7.5 RPM is. Instead of being flown
by the rhythm or caressed by the lull, we're just left to focus
on the inherent baseness of electronics, and we don't like it.
The sounds are tinny, hollow and overwound, which I will
blame almost entirely on the speed and depth. I can't dig this.
When Emanate's artists are ready to hop into the third
dimension, I'll happily be waiting.
B. Fleischmann: Music For Poploops
CD, Morr Music, 1999
I wanted to contrast Fleischmann with Emanated, because I
feel they have similar sounds and methodologies, but in
Fleischmann we can find the depth and soul Emanated cannot
provide us. If you don't believe me, put on Emanated, let in
run for a few tracks, then go to Fleischmann. That detached,
cold, grey feeling evaporates instantly, as the warmth and heart
of Fleischmann's music penetrates deep. Fleischmann's music
is constructed out of the same parts: a drum pattern, an aesthetic
loop and some twittering bleepery running through it like children
at a suburban Christmas party. But Fleischmann's sounds are
full and developed: they invite us in, willingly or not, we can
only take them as a unified whole, not pick them apart. You
have to work consciously to separate Fleischmann's tracks:
they blend together and segue in and out so skillfully that we're
left with ambience with beats in the forefront that is unabashfully
whimsical, poppy and good. One of my favorite things about
this disc is what I would call enviornmental reproductions, which
I hear in all the tracks. Exactly what you would consider these
is up for debate in most tracks, but Fleischmann seems to be
making electronic music replicate the sounds of planet Earth
instead of just incorporating the actual sounds, which is genius.
This is at its best and most obvious in "Breakfast at Rhiz", where
machines eat breakfast together. This is a can't miss release,
very, very good, and unlike some others a serious and thoughtful
attempt at mining a nearly untouched mother lode.
Solvent: Solvently One Listens
CD, Suction, 1999
And I work to critically condemn yet another listmember's work
(first Hrvatski, then the Emanate boys, and soon Aspen and others).
I'm not gunning for you guys, honest. You're not straw men.
It just happens these were the albums on top of the collection so
they just happened to be the first to get reviewed. Honest.
This album is much more difficult for me to review, as unlike
with Emanated or Hrvatski I am not ultimately convinced it is
shoddy: I'm merely convinced I'm not passionate about it. I've probably
listened to
it twenty times, and I still haven't been captivated, but nor
have I been bored. The best way to describe this record is a
mix of Aphexian/Rephlexian programming with slight new
wave sensibilities peeping through. Unlike Emanated the
sounds on this record are developed and appropriate, and
unlike Hrvatski this record has a great unity and sense of purpose.
It's not that I don't care for Solvent's 80's influences either (Big Country's
"In A Big Country" is my favorite song ever, even though it doesn't
have quite as many keyboards as the Human League). But when
I listen to this my emotions are not stirred, shaken and tugged,
and my heart doesn't soar. I just note there's nothing wrong with
it. And technically, that's true. But I like music to strike a chord
in me, whether it's sadness, or anger, or thoughtful contemplation.
This album does nothing for me, like say its close cousins Boards
of Canada or Thug. Try as I might, nothing is coming back. All
the technical and production aspects are there (more so than on
the debut, I guess) but the intangibles are absent.
Elektronische Musik Aus Buenos Aires
CD, Traum, 1999
Yes Virginia, they make electronic music in Argentina (amidst
tearful reminiscing about Di Stefano). Not only that, they make
extremely Cologne-influenced electronic music (at the Goethe
Institute, no less). And with the exception of the true Cologne
luminaries, they make superior music. Think of producers with
a totally fresh frame of mind and a take on electronics almost free
of the spectre of influence and that's what you have here. Take
Fantasias Animades' "Mike's Road", the first electronic track
I've ever heard that really sounds like a successful megamix
of four tracks with a repeating vocal sample (from Paris, Texas?)
tying them all together. Grand! Take Yuxtapose's "Sciex Elan"
that for two minutes is your standard Cologne-esque kick drum
buried under the reverberating sound wall, until the last minute
when a veritable circus big tent of entirely fresh, playful sounds
break out in all directions. Take Gustavo Lamas, who, like 1999's
golden boy, Olaf Dettinger, is extremely skilled at weaving
ambience and skeletal techno into a captivating quilt. This is
a very good compilation, one that doesn't serve as a breaking point
or a new subgenre definition, but one that serves as an excellent
new take on a familiar sound.
(continued in part 2 (packaged separately))
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