On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Guillaume Grenier wrote:
quoted 4 lines Hmm... Interesting. I'll have to hear this. I have mixed reactions to> Hmm... Interesting. I'll have to hear this. I have mixed reactions to
> Takemura. I thought "Child and Magic" was a masterly work and I loved
> "Scope". However, I couldn't warm up to "Funfair". I even dumped it,
> something I rarely do....
Really? I was just listening to it last night and it was totally great,
like Oval's schizophrenia tempered by hebephrenia. How can you resist
the mighty Sabure?
Anyway: I had lost track of Photek sometime after Rings Around Saturn, but
ran across his latest album while visiting a friend in Chicago album.
After the trashing that Solaris got at the hands of his drum 'n bass
acolytes, I couldn't resist a chance to hear Parkes' alleged crimes
against humanity. While it certainly fits the "Photek goes house" bill,
very few people mentioned how his production methodology still works its
magic. One mere measure of the terse, barking steel drum (or whatever the
fuck) that carries the rhythm of "Terminus" and you know you're in Parkes'
grip- brutally punishing in its austerity for exactly as long as you
choose to struggle against it. I had to fight through the deep house
tracks in the middle (whose vocals seemed almost plopped down over the
track without any interesting contrasts being drawn), but the soothing
balm of the later pseudo-ambience provided a surprisingly sweet finish to
the whole affair. It's almost enough to make me check out his first
proper full-length, despite reservations that it may be a deadly boring
tech-geek affair (as I found most latter day full-length drum 'n bass
albums to be- if anybody wants to set me straight on this, please feel
free).
Rounding out the evening was a 3" CD from Apestaartje- I swear there's
something inevitably compelling about electronically manipulated guitar
samples (c.f. Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman CD, Dean Roberts and Oren
Ambarchi); perhaps it's because it has become a nexus between what a
friend calls "laptop tomfoolery" and the acousmatic, post-tabletop,
approaches to playing the instrument that have gained in popularity as
Keith Rowe's influence spreads. Regardless, this is a collection of
sparser compositions which highlight plectrum over drone (guitar and non)
& it does the trick pretty well. It could've easily appeared on Mego, but
that really speaks more towards its consistency of quality than actual
sound (which is, nonetheless, compatible). They opened for the
Noto/Fennesz/I-Sound extravaganza @ Tonic last week, but I (like most of
you) didn't manage to catch their set. Luckily, their presence on the
bill reminded me to pick up this record, which is somewhat aptly called
"Small Record (or Wait)".
-rob
ps- Henri Chopin LP on Tangent (heard at a party) blows doors on the above
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