Brian MacDonald <brianm@kuci.org> wrote:
quoted 10 lines I think I finally encountered what sounds like The Album Of 2000 So
>I think I finally encountered what sounds like The Album Of 2000 So
> >Far...Land Of The Loops "Puttering About A Small Land". Those of you
> >who picked up "Bundle Of Joy" within the past four years know Alan
> >Sutherland's craft of throwing together dope beats, children's >melodies
>incorporating guest female vocalists and dee-lish Peter Hook >style bass
>lines, Severed Heads style looping/delaying, and humorous >found-sound
>segues a la Coldcut. This new record should definitely >keep "Bundle Of
>Joy" fans happy, but it is far more spacey and dreamy >-- which shouldn't
>really come as a surprise if you also own and >enjoy the "Refried Treats"
>EP.
Can't agree on the album of 2000 bit-- I like what Sutherland does, but he's
doing it on a treadmill. The new disc's aptly titled in that regard. I've
gotta give him some credit for churning out some nice no-effort answering
machine messages for those that don't like to hear their own voice on
recordings (even if David Berman thinks that's something you're supposed to
outgrow as you get older), but on a single listening I wasn't able to
discern much difference between Suth's work now and what he was doing in
'96. Although, BTW, anybody that's a fan of LoL should probably check out
Buckminster Fuzeboard's hyperactive cheese machine as well (album name
escapes me). Pleasant along the same vein, and features Alan on a few
tracks.
Oh, and I know this album's been mentioned a couple times already, but I was
listening to Slicker's remix album today and was struck by something--
Confidence in Duber sounds more like remixes than do the remixes. What I
mean is, the orig. album ALREADY sounds deconstructed (my guess is that the
original tape was an old alcoholic breathing moist static into a vocoder),
and the remixers sort of picked up the pieces and made more traditional,
cohering tracks, except that the resulting songs still couldn't avoid
sounding like Slicker songs. Hence the funny reversal.
Granted, it's not all that unusual that a remix might sound more traditional
or coherent than the original, but it IS rare the way it plays out here.
Hughes has this odd way of putting sounds together so that all the assorted
edges and pieces hang and jut against each other like an aural version of
cognitive dissonance, and it's as if the remixers brought the songs back to
the primitive state where the contradictions were never apparent and the
parts were allowed to juxtapose harmlessly. Hell, that even goes for Matmos'
three-platter pile-up. I think part of the reason might be that Slicker's
trademark stutter-step organic rhythms sound half the time like they're
trying not to trip over anything, and half the time like they ARE tripping
over something, and that's been ironed out a bit in the transition to the
remixes.
Apologies for drivel.
Matthew
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