“Different
kinds of expressions for love”. With this statement,
Chris Dooks closes the penultimate track of this album
and gives in the process the key to his work. A labour
of love, You Know, You Love Something Little
definitely is. Love of impressionist touches, conflicting
emotions and harrowing illusions.
As intricate as they are, the soundscapes crafted by Chris
Dooks on this new album are as beautiful and fascinating
as ever. Based around very basic sound structures developed
to create an illusion of total abstraction, the twenty
six tracks composing You Know, You Love Something
Little progress sharply between beat-less formations,
mechanical patterns and samples of conversations. In some
respects close to his work with the Northern Region Film
& Television Archive, collected earlier this year
on the inspiring To Look
North, this new album follows Dooks’s collaboration
with Frank Bretschneider released conjointly by French
label Bip-Hop and Irish imprint Fällt.
Far from the arid soundscapes of his contributions to
Reciprocess,
Dooks sculpts here sharp and short atmospheric vignettes,
using a highly textural palette of sound sources ranging
from bells to blank noises, electric guitars and human
voices, at times treated, at others used as raw components.
Despite the many mechanical aspects of his music, the
mood is incredibly serene, an intrinsic characteristic
of his work. The soundscapes are extremely complex, tightly
held together to form intriguing moving shapes. From the
ebbs and flows of the opening track, Antifoni,
to the isolationist scratches of 100 x Glimma,
Dooks throws in a wide range of emotions and impressions
that he hangs out at will. The part story told by a woman
of a walk in the fields on Bubblor casts a strangely
disturbing shadow on the rest of the track, and seems
somehow entirely disconnected from the background drones,
as if the voice element was interfering directly with
the recording equipment and was not an actual part of
the composition. Dooks has used excerpts of conversation
to length on To Look North.
Here however, due to the specific placement of the voice
in the spectrum and the absolute lack of contextual references
in the story itself, the element appears terribly chilling.
Elsewhere, on the broken Pax / Nexus / Beech
and the interlude Rationell, calm atmospheric
waves of soft melodies wash away the tormented soundscapes
for a moment.
Dooks sound manipulation techniques means that the tracks
are extremely varied in structures. He juggles precariously
with his sonic elements, very often injecting a whole
series of extremely different ambiences in the same track
to create an impression of chaos. The abrupt changes of
directions are as unpredictable as they are unsettling,
resulting in an impeccable effect of sound collages, but
Dooks manages to remain consistent not only with his work
all the way through this album, but also with his previous
releases.
With yet another mind-blowing production, Dooks establishes
himself firmly at the sharp end of contemporary music,
as he goes far beyond the realm of electronica, joining
the likes of Peter Green or Autechre in a tireless search
for unknown territories. Ignoring this record would be
criminal.
5/5 |
