Signed to Hydrogen Dukebox sister label Recordings Of
Substance, Icarus, formed of cousins Ollie Bown and
Sam Britton, emerged at the end of the nineties with
a first album, Kamikaze. Recorded in Sarajevo,
while they where holding DJ workshops shortly after
the Bosnian conflict ended, the album presented an interesting
collection of drum’n’bass-influenced compositions
evoking the sparse soundscapes of early Photek or Source
Direct records. Icarus returned to similar grounds a
year later with Fijaka, on which they further
explored the possibilities of dance music through darker
and more contrasted constructions. Moving to Trevor
Jackson’s Output Recordings for their third opus,
and their own imprint, N/A, for their fourth, the pair
find their spiritual home with Leaf as they unleash
I Tweet The Birdy Electric.
With this album, Icarus move away from their minimal
drum’n’bass roots to explore a far wider,
and more rewarding, collection of sounds and ambiences.
If their previous records already hinted at wide-open
spaces and intricate structures, I Tweet The Birdy
Electric resembles a vast sonic mobile which appear
to come to life with the slightest breeze. Fruit of
continuous live improvisations, the album acts as a
diary of moments encountered during these extensive
jam sessions. Sometimes evoking the complex structures
and abstract melodies of Asa-Chang
& Junray’s stellar Jun
Ray Song Chang, Icarus reveal more clearly
the essence of their influences, said to range from
Zappa to Ornette Coleman. Treating each sound, for the
best part acoustic, as if it were a fragile piece of
a large jigsaw, the pair build abstract background sonic
on which they hang delicate broken melodies, leaving
the listener with the task of mentally reconstructing
each composition as they please.
Ganglion, which opens the album, soon appears
to be the most straightforward piece here, yet the mastery
with which the beat, sharp and hurried yet laidback
hovers around the melodic line demonstrates impressive
control and vivid imagination. The rough deconstruction
of tracks such as Frogmatik, Mutations
or Birdz Max contrast with the more subtle
melodic circumvolutions of Pots & Reeds,
Antz Nez or the ambitious Three False Starts
to create some interesting relief to this unpredictable
record.
With I Tweet The Birdy Electric, Icarus challenge
the listener’s perceptions as much as they do
their own natural career progression, risking the integrity
of their entire body of work for the search of the perfect
sound. This however pays off here as the pair manages
to remain consistent not only throughout the eleven
compositions presented here, but also faithful to the
spirit of their previous releases. Here, they simply
appear to distance themselves from more direct forms
of music to reach a level of honesty and sincerity rarely
achieved.
4.4/5 |
