Journal sielwolf's Journal: Corpusculum Dei 5
Rather than reviewing music, the Beeb beat me to it. Here we have strange; and here we have charm. Clear?
Hardly. Reduced to its indivisible elements buying music can be a real pain in the ass. Consider that my first disc, Dopplereffekt Linear Accelerator, took nearly as long to go Boston, MA -> Columbia, MD as my second disc, Ricardo Villalobos Acachofa, did going from fucking Montreal to here. The benefit is that it shows the strength of a new online Americas music vendor, Cheap Thrills. Not only can they get shit to you from Canada in reasonable time, but they do everything off of the God indie music search engine, GEMM. They also have a storefront so if you're cruising through Quebec, stop by. This also doesn't speak well for the usually reliable Forced Exposure. Sure, their catalog is deep (I'm really itching for that Ennio Morricone set of film scores. If you only know the man from his spagetti western themes [The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly], you need to check his later work. Top notch) but I waited over a month for them to get that Villalobos disc in (before halting and just going to Cheap Thrills). Maybe it was a one-time bad karma thing... but you just can't let crap like that happen.
Anyway, I was seduced by Dopplereffekt originally by their Detroit electro stylings that were very Mu-esque: Gesamtkunstwerk features the cold war boardwork of Rudolf Klorzeiger and various pornographic vocal stances by To Nhan Le Thi. Great tracks like "Plasiphilia": "I want to have sex/with a mannequin/I want to suck it/I want to fuck it". The theme was similar on "Pornoviewer" or "Pornoactress". Really, more fun and frivilous than electroclash was letting the scene have. Of course Gesamtkunstwerk has not been in print for a while now. So I thought the next best thing would be Dopplereffekt's 2003 release Linear Accelerator.
Does anyone else get worried when Joy Division's "Atmosphere" is invoked by a big sticker on the front of a cd? What about a first track that is 21 minutes long?
Obviously Linear Accelerator is not of the same lineage as Gesamtkunstwerk. Reading the above BBC article (or having quantum physics experience), you will be familiar with such technicals as "Myon-Neutrino", "Z-Boson", and "Higgs-mechanism". Of course in this sense they are songs but the aural effect is what you expect: long minimal ambient tracks that dip deep into the expanse that is Abstract. The closest sonic equivalent of recent vintage was probably Tribes of Neurot's Adaptation and Survival but with the humming of insects replaced with, I dunno, the tick of quantum particles against the eardrum?
I guess the real problem is that I'm not the sort to sit intently on a 21 minute track... followed by a 15 minute track, followed by a 12 minute track. There's a reason why I never got into Godspeed Black Emperor!: there's a point (about oh, say 30 minutes in or so) where you have the epiphany you're being taken for a fucking ride. Real abstract "soundscape" music is akin to free jazz on the level of wankitutde that it inspires.
Luckily, the disc doesn't descend into that. But it is ignorable in a bad way: by doing anything more than listening, the sounds disappear. And the problem is there are none of those "Whoa... rewind that!" moments that just leap out, trap into your kernel, and force you to give the undivided. Ok, there's one: "Higgs-Mechanism" the (not surprisingly) most electro sounding track. Its a theremin hum with a simple bleep progression for about four bars. The interesting part is the slow manipulation of both. Unlike the rest of the disc, its subtlety is graspable. There's even a neat stereo effect to it: the bleeps soon start dancing back and forth between the left and right channel. The effect as their positions shift is disorienting; like those tricks you did in high school where you end up all light-headed.
Ok, maybe I was a bit to severe. "Myon-Neutrino" is a bassy little gem of atmospherics. To summarize, this disc is far from being Bad or even Mediocre... it just suffers from common abstractionist pitfalls... and, honestly, it wasn't what I was looking for when I picked it up.
Finally, to 828 and DJ magazines who shill on the sleeve sticker: this is nothing like John Carpenter music. Shit, have any of you fuckillacs ever seen a John Carpenter movie? All of his music is about three fingerstrokes on a Korg. To wit:
Assault on Precinct 13:
dow-du-du-Der-nownt/
Dow-Du-Du-DER-nownt/
dow-du-du-der-nownt/
dow-du-du-Der-nownt!
Escape from New York:
(bow-bow-bu-bow)/
bu-nu-Nah (bow-bow-bu-bow)/
bu-nu-NEH (bow-bow-bu-bow)/
bu-nu-NUH-NEH-Neh-Nah-Neh-Nuh-NEH (bow-bow-bu-bow)
Halloween:
(tica-tica-tica-tica-tica-tica-tica-tica-tica-tica)/
dew-duh-down-du-dew-don-duh-dew-down-DE-dew-don-de-dew-down...
If one was talking about the original electro aspect of Dopplereffekt, you'd be close. Close as in saying "Britney Spears is redefining hip-hop with her fried chicken eating stylee!" Fuckheads. How did they end up writing about music again?
Any-hoo, as I was waiting for Acachofa to come in I saw that techno-fellow Richie Hawtin (Plastikman) said that Villalobos was the Fucking Future. And after hearing "Easy Lee" I was pretty sure I'd be agreeing with him. Although over ten minutes long, "Easy Lee" is one of those Big Fucking Tracks that very famous acts spend careers living up to and the kind that break talentless wonders into NME overexposure. Of course Villalobos has been doing this thing for a while and this niche of IDM/lounge isn't the sort of thing that has fans getting all ostentatious with "Biggest Fucking Band EVAR!" overstatement. That being said, this is one of those songs that gets fucking stuck in you. Something like "Kelly Watch the Stars" or Stardust "The Music Sounds Better with You". It accomplishes what no track on Linear Accelerator does: it makes one hit rewind. The comparison to Those French Bands isn't off the mark (although Villalobos is a Berliner by way of Chile): its very simple chill out with a very soft vocorder as the chorus. The electronics bleed with that aching orchestration that could, at the wrong moments, step over to generic Club Anthemness. But it doesn't... and instead gets you soothed along... for ten minutes. That last part leaves me impressed. Rare is a song worth sticking on repeat that is over six.
Of course one track does not an album make. Howard Hawks' Law of Good Movies: "Three great scenes. No bad scenes."
sielwolf's Album Exterpolation: "Three great songs. No bad songs."
Now I wouldn't say that Acachofa reaches that metric. "Y.G.H.", which follows "Easy Lee" is a yawning smooth track, that is wonderfully supplementary. Hell, its good by itself. But intelligently the disc doesn't try to enqueue all similar tracks, instead allowing for the gears to smoothly transition for 5th to 4th.
"Dexter" too is a fine-fine track. It is this swallowing warm burp. It is never rushed as the percussion slowly builds, one element on the other. And it all falls out at the 2:15 mark... a bridge to the song's very heart: resonating strings. And not just any. A few minimalistic plucks of what sounds like wrist-fat factory rebar, humming to no one in particular. The delay gives a whole sense: a forest of them. 'Forest' is appropriate. Trees in a high wind storm? That rustling chortle, soon after a thunderhead, that they share among themselves?
And Villalobos' approach is that of a consumately restrained touch. And this too is a nine minute track. But instead of using the time to just record any and all blowjobery he stumbles upon, the time is used to gently persuade the listener. Many DJ's go entire lifetimes without learning these lessons.
Now would I say this is a great album? No. But excellent excellent excellent. Maybe Hawtin appreciates it because it never strays far from 80 BPM. Not really varied but it does it's one thing thing very well.
Dopplereffekt Linear Accelerator **1/2
Villalobos, Ricardo Alcachofa ****
should i weight reviews against song length? (Score:2)
Ummm... I am the sort to do just that.
There's a reason why I never got into Godspeed Black Emperor!: there's a point (about oh, say 30 minutes in or so) where you have the epiphany you're being taken for a fucking ride.
You say that like it's a bad thing. I guess if you're in a hurry to get somewhere, you might get impatient, but I enjoyed the rides they took
Re:should i weight reviews against song length? (Score:2)
They just ain't my thing I guess. And the fact that it's unlike all of Dopplereffekt's earlier work. If those two things aren't a factor, this album is right up your alley.
Re:should i weight reviews against song length? (Score:1)
there is a very thin line between "genius subtlety" and "wankery that goes nowhere." i've found different people have widely varying threshholds that determine where this line exists. but for song length, i just want there to be a purpose to making a
Re: (Score:2)
Re:should i weight reviews against song length? (Score:2)
And yes, one has to be in the mood for long. Despite a fondness for Art of Noise, I've occasionally skipped forward after hearing too much of one song -- but in those situations, I'm usually looking for something more 'up' such that GSYBE et al would never had made it to the CD player.