INKBLOT - Love Your Mother

09'02

Click on this cover and access the Audio Dregs web site

INKBLOT
Love Your Mother
(ADR042) Audio Dregs 2002
11 Tracks. 39mins32secs.
Buy this CD on line now

Electronic music is in essence a laboratory for new sounds and revolutionary ideas. With the harsher side of electronica becoming quite predominant in the last few years, a more gentle side has emerged, focusing on more melodic structures. Inkblot is Texan Jeremy Ballard, and Love Your Mother is his second album, the first for Portland-based label Audio Dregs. Released two years ago on German label Tomlab, The Language Game, Ballard’s first album, presented a series of soft electronic constructions based on found sounds and warm analogue machinery layered on melancholic beat organisations. Love Your Mother pretty much takes off where The Language Game left. This brilliant collection is fuelled by sounds of discreet guitars, bass and environmental noises wrapped up in old fashioned synthetic waves, creating an intricate assortment of playful or moody atmospheric moments. Consciously juxtaposing acoustic and electronic in delicately assembled vignettes, Ballard constantly alters the focus of his tracks by suddenly switching from one to the other for a while, then re-establishing the balance. The album is unusually short, at less than forty minutes, and dense. The opening They Get By On Laughter offers a good insight on the rest of the album with its organic noises and syncopated acoustic guitar, defining a subtle recurring melodic line on which a voice hovers for a while, ebbing and flowing before emerging more prominently when the whole structure appears to collapse. Why I Left The Stove On is deceivingly more contained and linear as Ballard pushes the melody in the forefront while almost imperceptibly tempering with the background sound sources to create a perverse lullaby-like piece of sharp electronic. Later, he inverses the process again on After Careful Deliberation I Find It Hard To Deny The Fact That What We All Need Is Less Sleep & More Dream. Kicking off with some kind of interference, he develops a post-rock, guitar-led ambience, and then slowly engulfs it in distorted electronic convulsions. Persevering with the same constants for the following tracks, Ballard sums up the slight ambiguity of his compositions by exposing their diverse facets all at once in the concluding title track.
With this second Inkblots album, Jeremy Ballard presents his wicked interpretation of electronic music with more aplomb, creating a convincing, if sometimes slightly too conservative, soundtrack.

Buy this CD on line now

TRACK LISTING

01	They Get By On Laughter	07	It Contained All Color
02	Why I Left The Stove On	08	Moth Bath
03	ISM/ASM	09	Perhaps There Was Nothing Left To Say
04	Soapy	10	Rods & Cones
05	After Careful Deliberation I Find It Hard To Deny The Fact That What We All Need Is Less Sleep & More Dreaming	11	Love Your Mother
06	Smile & Wave

BLUE STATES DISCOGRAPHY

THE LANGUAGE GAME Tomlab 2000 _	Day Of The System Builders And Here We Are Returnless I Thought It Was Something Else As If There Was Reason To Our Chatter The One With The Blue & Yellow Trim Mono No Aware Even Now With These Robot Arms Miko Rides Again Greyscaled _
LOVE YOUR MOTHER Audio Dregs 2002 Buy it on line now _	They Get By On Laughter Why I Left The Stove On ISM/ASM Soapy After Careful Deliberation I Find It Hard To Deny The Fact That What We All Need Is Less Sleep & More Dreaming Smile & Wave It Contained All Color Moth Bath Perhaps There Was Nothing Left To Say Rods & Cones Love Your Mother

THE SURFER'S GUIDE TO INKBLOT

AUDIO DREGS
Based in Portland, Oregon, Audio Dregs have been slowly building a very interesting collection of records, releasing artists including E*Vax, E*Rock (both brothers also head the label), Inkblot, The Sensualists or Dim Dim.

TOMLAB
Based in Cologne, the label's releases are in line with the majority of the German electronic scene, providing countless brilliant records to the world.