Simon Pyke was always going to end up having something
to do with technology. Aged nine, he built a fully functional
chocolate dispensing machine from his set of technological
Lego. If this hasn’t much to do with his music,
it however shows that he had a mind for unconventional
things. When he received a toy Casio sampler for his
twelfth birthday, his interest switched from building
purposeless machinery to shaping sound. In the following
years, Pyke had built himself a little lo-fi studio
from junk bought in car boot sales, and started playing
his stuff at London’s Berwick Street’s Ambient
Soho record shop. His first album, Elastic Speakers,
released on Ambient Soho’s alter-ego label Worm
Interface followed shortly after, establishing him as
one of the most interesting new faces of the mid-nineties.
He then toured with Autechre,
moved from Swindon to London, and released a handful
of records for a variety of labels, including Skam,
Warp, Worm Interface and Sprawl. At 23, he became a
sound designer for the seminal Designers Republic, and
continued to expand his musical scope when he spent
two months in Vietnam and China collecting instruments
and found sounds, which he later collected on the brilliant
Audio-Tourism
album, published on Quatermass.
With Human, his seventh album, Pyke returns
to Manchester-based Skam, who released his first single,
The Free EP, back in 1995. Like on Audio-Tourism,
he uses here a range of ethnic elements, but this time,
the focus is on more mechanical structures. Once again
charting unusual territories along the fourteen tracks
included here, Pyke demonstrates his dexterity at sound
manipulation as he builds apparently relatively simple
funky structures on which he applies strong melodic
lines. The playful opening track, Big Top,
is archetypical of Pyke’s work over the years
in the way the sonic construction is only a pretext
to explore the possibilities of his machines and push
his own boundaries. All the way through this album,
he builds his tracks around tribal percussive components,
giving Human an interesting organic twist.
The title track shows an equally as playful Pyke. Perhaps
one of the most typically electronic moments of this
album, this track seems split between the desire to
break free from its programmed behaviour and the automated
mindless progression of its elements. This might seems
more complex than it actually is, as the mischievous
pseudo human computer generated voice gives away the
game from the beginning. On Nylon, Pyke integrates
some elements of Buddhist chants within the tormented
metallic framework, softening the blow of the beat with
the prayers developing in the background. Very little
treatment seems to have been applied here, but Pyke’s
ability to render complex tricks in a very simple way
could be deceiving. The rest of the album follows a
similar path, as the man alternates between sophisticated
arrangements and organic constructions, ultimately creating
one of his most enjoyable pieces of recording to date.
Despite being only 25, Simon Pyke demonstrates an increasingly
mature approach to his work, as he constantly builds
on his previous experiences to take his sound to a new,
more complex level, yet achieving greater accessibility.
Although one could pick up on a few obvious influences
emerging through Human, it must be said that
this record has a very strong identity, and an overwhelming
personality. One of the best releases from Skam, Human
is before all terribly addictive.
5/5 |
