SLACKER
Start A New Life
GAEA014
GodLike & Electric 2010
11 Tracks. 51mins49secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

We’ve now reached the point that should make anyone over the age of twenty one feel old – the nineties are being cannibalized for nostalgic purposes. Tape labels, Orbital and Pavement reuniting; these a but a few of the signs that that decade is are ancient history now, enough to be retro, and cherished as a memory of how good things were way back when.

Clearly, Shem McCauley is one such person. The story behind his comeback album under the Slacker moniker, Start A New Life, even reads like something from the nineties: tired of his shallow surroundings as a successful progressive house DJ (also producing as Head Honcho, and as part of the Ramp project with Simon Rogers), it was time for a soul-cleansing move to Thailand, where McCauley still resides and (no joke) teaches yoga. It sounds like what could easily be the workings of a new age disaster, but it’s to McCauley’s credit that New Life is a refreshing blast of chill-out music, unafraid to embrace a wide emotional range.

Chill-out albums didn’t die in the 2000s; the popular ones just lost all their darkness and edge, and became snooze-worthy festivals of saccharine exoticism. New Life, conversely, is thrilling as a decidedly earthbound record of slow beats. Little tracklets like I Have No Memory and A Million Dreams focus on confusion and fear as an inescapable emotion for the real daydreamers. When I Was A Child further dwells on nostalgia, as a sampled interviewee recounts his fuzzy childhood memories. The presentation of these broken bits of the hazy past is more revelation than pacification, however – we live our childhoods, and then lose many of the memories, left only with vague approximations of our formative years on this earth.

New Life is compellingly emotional – there are sections that get the listener choked up, sections that bring a smile to one’s face, and plenty of feelings in between. It’s an album possessed of the big-picture observer feeling that permeates watching a movie, likely a residual effect of McCauley having written it on his laptop in the middle of a shopping mall. This location-based track making may further be the reason for the odd passiveness that permeates New Life. The title track finds its sampled protagonist in a surprisingly peaceful post-traumatic appreciation mode – “it’s amazing that I came out of it but, now, I feel that, with all that experience, I’m gonna start a new life.”

Musically, New Life employs the expected tropes for a chill-out record – laidback hip-hop lite beats, flittingly beautiful piano melodies, gentle synth strings, sampled speech, and jazzy percussion are all where they need to be. McCauley inserts musical homage to nineties chill-out albums via samples, which include a bit off Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II (on A Million Dreams), or the speech sample from The Orb’s Outlands, which appears prominently on single Hymn To Her. The latter track nods further to 2000s chill-out records, with a stretched double bass that would fit comfortably on any Ninja Tune release.

Start A New Life, looks to the sounds of the past, but it’s more a work of memory than of nostalgia. Childhood remembrances are a frequent theme, and the distant tunnels from which vocal and speech samples tend to emerge feel indefinable, not marketable. Prone to deep thought, McCauley is nevertheless clearly very content with himself. Rare as it may be, he’s a more fascinating artist for it.

4/5

Slacker (MySpace) | GodLike & Electric
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

KOUTARO FUKUI
Gently Touching The Conception
SEM005
SEM Label 2009
03 Tracks. 44mins00secs

Koutari Fukui is a man of many hats – sometimes film music maker, label owner, commercial sound designer – but a full-time sound sculptor. Sculpture is the right visual metaphor for Gently Touching The Conception, as the three pieces contained within are stuttering, lush monoliths carved from slabs of ambient drone. At nearly twenty minutes in length, Gently starts off as a kind of tease, as Fukui debuts caustic samples of the clicks, scratches, and tones that build out the second half. It’s a bit of a rocky start, and liable to scare away first-time listeners, but allowing Fukui his indulgences yields the stunning progression of the piece. The tonal source material here sounds rather basic – airy squelches, sparse and distant piano, and a sine wave bass loop ambling along. The soundtrack to something contemplative and probably pretentious, surely, but Gently admirably never feels like its been prodded to unnecessary lengths.

After the valley-mountain-valley structure of Gently, the remaining pieces, Touching and The Conception are more upfront and consistent. Announcing itself with a channel-oscillating series of high-pitched sine tones (which, admittedly, will either be entrancing or headache-inducing, depending on the mind/ears they reach), Touching is an airy affair, as the aforementioned tones gradually mutate into minor-key organs, reminiscent of Tim Hecker’s ambient nostalgia.

Touching transforms subtly into The Conception, the latter piece evolving from a section bathed in heavy, sleepy reverberation. The Conception brings the album full circle a third of the way through, with the reintroduction of the crispy synth percussion that marks the most complex passages of Gently. Rather than becoming a rhythm-dominated piece, however, The Conception becomes a study in frequency ranges, with its most notable parts being a sub-bass murmur and more Touching-esque high-pitched buzzes. Halfway through, Fukui essential reinterprets the genesis blocks from the beginning of the piece, ending with eight minutes of slow, gorgeous decay.

For someone with film scoring experience, Fukui seems to be utilizing the ability to set moods through music but willfully confusing listeners. There are parts to each of these pieces, which, on their own, would be clearly elegiac, contemplative, celebratory, panic-stricken; the thing is, no one feeling ever dominates. The result is an album that commands some kind of active listening. Even when put on as background music, Gently Touching The Conception has a way of creeping into one’s thoughts.

4.3/5

Koutaro Fukui | Koutaro Fukui (MySpace) | SEM Label

SND
Atavism
R-N 107
Raster-Noton 2009
16 Tracks. 62mins10secs

SND | Raster-Noton
Buy: CD | MP3 | iTunes

Citing a dictionary definition is perhaps the most clichéd way to begin any kind of persuasive piece, but here I am and all I can think of are the reasons why SND have titled this record Atavism. So, here it goes: atavism: the reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some remote ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations.

Keeping in mind that such a title suggests a musical continuum, it’s initially puzzling to hear that this music is as polished and, there being no better descriptor, sanitary as it comes. There’s minimalism, and then there’s minimal techno/microhouse – frequently breaking its own rules for blasts of funk – and then there’s this, the Lysol-coated showroom countertop. By comparison, Monolake sounds like big band jazz. It’s not just that tracks repeat the same themes with small, gradually unfolding variation, nor that that any ostensibly tonal material tends to hit only at the same time as a percussive counterpart. Atavism retreats even further into its own system by using the same general palette of strictly-digital sounds across the entire record.

The law of entropy would suggest that, with such restrictions, Atavism is doomed to be a bore. And, if approached at face value, that’s what’s going to happen. It’s not necessarily a fault, but Atavism is a record that demands active listening; otherwise it’s likely to pass by as a frustrating din. Like many of its Raster-Noton contemporaries, SND have a point to make here that is equal parts pretense and prankster. This is machine music, as sterile as it comes: any grace notes or funky stabs are incidental. It’s so clean and safe that it’s filthy in its refusal to play the humanizing game. Given the advances in computer compositional software, it’s possible to color sequenced music in a way that sounds increasingly like a human ensemble, complete with faults, fills, and wobbling velocities. SND have opted for another route, and end up asking the listener, what good is it to compose with a computer if you can’t let the machine influence the outcome?

Atavism reflects an interesting paradox of progress: the more technology pervades our lives, the more there’s the desire to distinguish between what is electronic and what is “real” – organic and tangible. Living now in an age where computers and electronics are advancing exponentially, some of the most popular musicians are those who play acoustic guitars and feature lush, human harmonies. The imperfections of electronic media have even become a nostalgic fetish object, as vinyl records, once derided by elitist aesthetes are devoid of the “aura” of an original performance, are now treasured for the distorted “warmth” and “human” imperfections of surface noise, as compared to digital media.

Atavism is a challenging record, to be sure, and one that requires an open mind and active appreciation for experimentation (though, show me a Raster-Noton release that doesn’t). Somehow, this makes the beautifully clean digital pads and incessant drums sound all the more triumphant. Atavism reflects its title in more than just a compositional sense (the verbose press release describes a philosophical process of sample manipulation and synthesis). edfaAtavism is a draw back to the early 20th-century futuristic ideals of Luigi Russolo: rather than fight against the ostensive “imperfections” of a sterile compositional environment with perfect timing and no tape hiss, it embraces these attributes and pushes them to their furthest limit.

4/5

SND | Raster-Noton
Buy: CD | MP3 | iTunes

MAUXUAM
Viceversa
ICHILLCD033
Interchill Records 2008
10 Tracks. 73mins06secs

Buy: CD | MP3 | iTunes

The world is getting smaller: just ask an electronic musician. True, the concept of “world music” is nothing new, but attempts at harvesting non-Western musics in bite-size pieces for white people to listen to has generally been fraught with (un)intentional exotification and misappropriation of said musical cultures. Good intentions, certainly, but as the saying goes, there leads the path to hell; listen to any of the dime-a-dozen compilations with yawning beats over tambura loops from the mid-nineties and tell me I’m wrong.

The past few years have seen an upset in this formula for the positive, however, as increasing Internet speeds and ease of access to digital media has fostered a more universally collaborative global musical realm. Rather than sampling music from some far-off, vague land, it’s easily possible for the average listener to log on to a blog from, say, São Paolo, and hear selections of local talent. The effects of this cross-pollination can be heard in the electrified lekimbes played by surprise-sensation Konono No.1 (not to mention that Congolese act’s collaborations with Björk, a singer from halfway around the world). We’ve also seen the advent of world-hopping DJs and producers, whose craft revolves around seeking out unheard sounds, and attempting to co-opt them on even terms. New talents like Diplo and Filastine have made a name from this, and, with Viceversa, Mauxuam delivers from a similar mindset.

Mauxuam’s Maurizio Liguori isn’t new to this, having released world-minded recordings from his base in Italy for the past couple decades. Now, however, seems to be a perfect time for him to take a larger spotlight, and Viceversa does a decent job of presenting his cultural blender. The productions here lean towards a dub-glitch hybrid, with granulated voices screaming out over punchy beats, with plenty of bass to go around. Rounding things out, there’s what could best be described as world music flotsam – a flute trill here, some mallets there. Viceversa apparently represents three years of work, during which time I can only imagine Liguori inhaled as much culture and psychedelic/blunted experience as possible, only to shotgun it back to listeners.

There are times when the weight of Liguori’s global ambitions weighs Viceversa down; Stone Of Gaza wears its political message on its sleeve, but a quest for something more dark and penetrating results in a piece that’s hard to sit through without an eye-roll or two. The vaguer the metaphors and/or targets, the better: Extended Body samples dialogue about the right tools in the wrong hands, without pointing specific fingers. It’s a more subtle criticism of the proliferation of antisocial technology (I think), and it serves to better enhance the sci-fi feel of the crisp pops and stutters of the percussion.

Musically, Viceversa ends up somewhere between Orbital circa-Middle Of Nowhere, a car commercial (appropriately, as Liguori’s credits including scoring for Volkswagen), the dead-serious cross-cultural ambitions of an act like Muslimgauze, and the psytrance/new age set. Thankfully, we don’t get any overly lengthy excursions in new age synth wankery, though the influence is there. The one major issue with Viceversa is that, for all the promotional materials, liner notes, and track titles accentuate that these are the reflections of a world traveler amongst foreign cultures, in many ways I feel as though I might enjoy the album more without these added concerns on its philosophy and sonic structure. There are moments when hand drums just aren’t necessary. Perhaps, in this new era of global musical collaboration and cross-pollination, it’s best to just let the music speak for itself.

3/5

Mauxuam | Interchill Records
Buy: CD | MP3 | iTunes

MARK PRITCHARD
? / The Hologram
HOHUM003
Ho Hum Records 2009
02 Tracks. 11mins23secs
Format: Digital

Buy: MP3 | iTunes

Most electronic musicians have some kind of signature sound – a crunchy clap/snare hybrid, or an acid synth squelch, perhaps. It’s something to signify to listeners that, even if the tracks we’re hearing are from a new pseudonym, it’s still the same person behind the controls.

Not so with Mark Pritchard. A member of Global Communication, Jedi Knights, Harmonic 33, and his recent solo project Harmonic 313 (just to name a few), Pritchard is a true sonic chameleon. The mellotron-heavy noir-museum feel of Harmonic 33 signifies little that it’s the same person who’s behind the lush ambient house of Global Communication or Harmonic 313’s bassy tech-hop. ?, Pritchard’s latest single – this time released under his given name for a change – throws yet another curveball. Abandoning the beats and pieces of the fresh Harmonic 313 full-length, When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence, ? is all foreboding atmosphere.

Harking back to Eno’s subtle and subdued ambient bubbles, there’s an undeniable thrill I feel every time I’m listening to ?, and I suddenly notice the track. It starts with a creepy Rhodes drone which seems to perfectly blend in with the industrial sounds of walking around a city, such that it can take up to half the track’s length for it to “out” itself as an intentional piece of music. Even when this happens, it’s still not exactly an explosion; Pritchard layers a few select Rhodes lines and warped Casiotone licks, before the piece fades out just as mysteriously as it began. Admittedly, my first impression was along the lines of “that’s it?,” but repeated listens have revealed the decaying, beautiful genius behind such a structure.

The Hologram is a more tangible B-side, bolstered by an actual beat. The atmosphere of late-night studio exploration remains, as The Hologram slowly paces itself through endlessly reverberated and echoing synthesizer squeals. The beat is all syrup, dripping down slowly through a booming sieve (here it’s also worth it to point out that the mastering is an extra claustrophobic treat). The end effect of The Hologram is a Harmonic 313-style dubstep single played at 33.

To be sure, ? / The Hologram is a curio in Mark Pritchard’s catalogue, and in terms of publicity, it’s taken a backseat to the 313 full-length and upcoming collaboration with Steve Spacek. It’s a testament to Pritchard’s creative prowess that he can knock out something so engaging as a side project. Fans of music that hits the intestines, the heart, and the mind with equal force would do well to seek this out.

4/5

Mark Pritchard (MySpace) | Reload Online | Ho Hum Records
Buy: MP3 | iTunes

Guitarist and electronic manipulator Chris Willits is a pioneer and a teacher, exploring new methodologies for signal processing, while publicly sharing his techniques through the video series What You Talkin’ ‘Bout Willits? for XLR8R. The latest EP from Willits’ side project, Flossin, with Zach Hill from Hella, features a who’s who of experimental musicians, from Matmos to Strategy to Wobbly. Willits sat down with themilkfactory’s David Abravanel after a solo show at John Zorn’s New York performance space, The Stone, to discuss advances in music technology, what exactly ‘folding’ is, and whether or not ‘Flossin’ should have umlauts over the ‘o’.

First off, great show! Your setup tonight – can you describe what you were playing through? Is this a usual setup for you on tour?
This is a brand new setup, actually. I’m traveling with a different interface, to save some room, and some extra pounds on my body when I’m moving stuff around. I’m using an Edirol FA-66 [computer audio interface], and a new computer, which I’m stoked about. For the first time, I can actually do my audio and live video processing on one machine. I used to tour with two computers, which, again, was a load on the back.

So, you’re using Ableton Live for live performance, then?
Yeah.

And how do you process video on the same screen – do you use the split-screen function?
Yes. Right now, I’m using the beta version of [Ableton Live] 8, which hasn’t come out officially, and is amazing. Actually, we just did a new XLR8R video about the beta version, looking at the looper and some other new features that are in it. So, I’m using 8 with some customized plugins made in Max/MSP, and then the video side is all in Jitter [visual environment developed by Max/MSP-makers Cycling 74]. I’m running Max 5 and Jitter at the same time that I’m doing the Ableton stuff.

And your laptop can handle that load, all on one machine?
Yeah! That’s what’s so amazing about it. This is the biggest jump in processing power that I’ve felt since the late nineties; it’s super exciting.

Could you describe what you do with the visuals? Are they synced up to the music, or more their own thing?
They’re synced up, in a sense, because the math – the proportions – underlying different jump cuts and folding processes is similar. I can trigger stuff directly from hits, or cuts and folds in the audio, and make that go directly to the video, but I find it more interesting if I have a little bit of a gap between what’s happening with the video and what’s happening with the audio. People become more active participants, and sync it up in their minds with their experiences, instead of it being this one-to-one, all-filled-in experience with nothing to imagine.

Last night I did an image collaboration with Scott Pagano. We used these images we shot at the Botanical Garden in San Francisco, years ago. We’ve been stockpiling this archival footage, and making slow-morphs between the scenes, and blurring them out, and making them change really gradually over time.

You mentioned using a beta of Ableton 8. You’re also an avid user of Max/MSP and Pluggo,a program allowing users to turn Max/MSP patches into plugins. Have you worked with Max for Live yet? Do you think it’s going to change things?
Absolutely. Max for Live is like my dream come true. I’m working with Ableton, giving them feedback. They haven’t released it officially, but we got some taste of it at NAMM [National Association of Music Merchants trade show], and it’s exciting, because all the stuff I’m doing with plugins can now be housed within Ableton. We’re going to see an exponential curve in customized signal processing. There’s also ways now, with Live 8, that you can share you stuff directly through the interface, online with people. It’s going to be remarkable, how much stuff there is for people to use, develop, co-develop, and collaborate on.

Looking at electronic musicians, a number of artists like to ‘black box’ what they do – they don’t share their techniques or tricks for making music. You’ve taken an opposite approach, with your series for XLR8R. When you look at something like Max for Live, would you be willing to share your Max/MSP patches – just put them out there for people?
Yeah, for sure! Over the years – I’ve been making patches for ten years – there’s a bunch of stuff I’ve developed. Essentially, what I’m doing with the XLR8R videos is trying to kind of lift the veil of obscurity on a lot of this stuff. People don’t really understand what live, improvising electronic and acoustic musicians are doing, or what kind of tools they’re using. So I’m trying to show the ‘backstage’ of my process, that’s one of the big intentions of the XLR8R series.

People who work with solid-state electronics and circuits often argue that there’s an impossiblity to replicate signature, that digital is too ‘perfect’ or ‘clean’ to match. Do you feel one way or the other about this?
The materiality of the process is going to end up creating a different result; it’s going to manifest something different. So, it depends on what you’re trying to go for. There are things you can do digitally that are absolutely remarkable, and there are tones and timbres and warmth that you get with analog processing and solid-state stuff that you can’t get digitally. That’s why I’m really interested in using both. I’m interested in hybridizing acoustic vibrating strings and electromagnetic pickups, and then using that with the idea of memory and processing, and folding and decimating things in different ways. I think that broadening your sound palette is a wonderful thing to do, so my approach is to use it all.

Quick side note – in a recent XLR8R video you mentioned a friend of yours in [San Francisco post-punk band] Flipper. Are they still together?
Yeah! They did a tour with Bad Religion.

Do you think you might collaborate with them – is that potentially on the horizon?
I’m trying to get Ted [Falconi] in the studio. He’s one of my favorite noise guitarists, and he’s an awesome guy. I’m trying to get him in the studio; we’re just trying to work out our schedules. So, Ted, if you’re checking out this post, the heat’s on man, you gotta come through! [laughs]

Speaking of collaboration, you’ve just released a new EP as Flössin.
Yeah, on Overlap.org.

Are there umlauts over the ‘o’ on that? I’ve seen it spelled with and without them.
[laughs]Yeah, I love it when people say ‘yeah man, I love “Floosin!”’ We kind of do it either way. We realized that sometimes when we wrote it as ‘Flössin’, there’d be some weird character over the umlaut, so it’d be like ‘Floo-‘diamond’-ssin’. Everyone was just calling is ‘Flossin’, so we’re just kind of switching it. On iTunes, though, it’s still Flössin, but on eMusic it’s Flossin. So, we’re just confusing people [laughs].

Sounds like fun! The core of Flössin is you and Zach Hill from Hella?
Yeah.

And on the last album, there was a kind of power trio with the two of you and Miguel Depedro, aka Kid606. On the latest EP you’re working with Matmos, and you have remixes from Wobbly, Strategy, and Brad Laner. How do these collaborations come about?
Flossin is just about getting the family together, getting our friends together, and just making noise and improvising. We take our favorite parts and we put them out, at a time that fits in during gaps of releases from the rest of us. It’s about having fun, and making beautiful noise.

There’s something incredibly metal about it – maybe it’s just the presence of Zach Hill. There’s shredding in a way that I don’t hear on anything else that you’ve done.
Yeah, absolutely! All music, all sound is a huge influence on my work. Especially free jazz traditions – John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman. It’s really exciting for me to have a side project that can allow those influences to come out in a different way. There is a metal-y, jazz, cosmic rock thing going on.

One more thing about the name – where does it come from? It sounds like a hip-hop name.
We were thinking ‘flossin’, like ‘kicking it’. The name was kind of a joke, stemming from Hella, because ‘hella’ is a Northern California way of saying something is really cool. So ‘Flossin’ kind of stemmed off that. But Flössin, now that’s some new linguistic territory right there. We have the opportunity right now to actually coin that – get someone to write a false etymology.

It almost sounds like a portmanteau of ‘Foot Loosin’’
[laughs] Foot Loosin! That’s good.

There’s a rich scene of experimental electronic music in San Francisco, and you’ve worked with many of those artists. How long have you been ingrained in that, and has it been part of your development as an artist?
Absolutely. I went out to Mills [College] for grad school back in 2000, and I just felt right at home. In the bay area, there’s a rich improvising community of people doing electronic stuff, and noise stuff, minimal melodic things, chamber music – whatever. I’m really interested to try and just have fun, and make music from my heart, and bring people together that I have fun with. Who knows? The next Flossin record might be totally different; it might have an orchestra with me and Zach playing, or it might just be me and Zach as a duo.

Another collaboration – you did the album Ocean Fire with Ryuichi Sakamoto. I remember reading a profile about it that suggested he did most of the raw instrumental material, and you processed it through Max/MSP. Is that how it worked, or were you both working with post-processing?
We were both processing sounds through Max/MSP at the same time. I was using Ableton and customized plugins, and he was using MSP and different samples that he had recorded. We fell into this sonic meditation, and four hours later – ‘whoa, we have enough stuff for a record!’

So it was recorded live, in one take?
Yeah, we recorded about four hours of material in one afternoon, then took our favorite spots and produced them.

Was the ocean something you were thinking about when you recorded it?
Subconsciously, I think that’s what came out. There were moments where we were in this sea of sound, and we didn’t know what we were making. There were times when we’d look at each other and just start cracking up, just like, ‘are you doing that or am I doing that?’ We just felt like were immersed in this whole sonic wash.

Going back to you working solo, how do your tracks usually start?
That’s a good question. It’s a really mysterious process to me. It’s something that I’m always listening to and trying to pay attention to. Usually, the seed comes from a random study, or playing around with something, and then a pattern will emerge, and I’ll start playing with that, and before I know it I’ll fall in love with it, and develop it over the next couple days, then maybe put it on the shelf and come back to it. I have gigs and gigs of these seeds that have come from improvising and playing, that’s usually how it starts.

Listening to the process, the music actually starts to tell me more what to do than I feel like I’m telling the music what to do. Like the performance tonight, I don’t really feel like I’m in control of it so much. I might have some ideas of where I want it to go, but it essentially is telling me, and guiding me along the path.

Looking at early releases of yours, there are works like Pollen, consisting mainly of processed guitar, compared to Surf Boundaries, which was much more song-oriented and instrumentally expanded. Did you always think you would end up working more with instruments and expanding your sound?
Oh, for sure. Right now, it seems like the chronology is minimal growing into more maximal, but I was doing a ton of music even before [my early solo albums], playing in bands. I think that throughout my growth and evolution, I’m going to be changing, and doing a lot of different stuff. I would love to make another record like Folding, And The Tea or Pollen. I actually have a few different things that I’m working on now that are similar in structure – more straight up, real time processing of guitar. All of that process helped to germinate what it is that I’m doing now, and that’s also going to evolve back into those familiar forms in the future as well.

Speaking of Folding, And The Tea, ‘folding’ is a term that you’ve used a lot with your music. It’s a technical term – could you explain what it is?
It has a lot to do with time. I actually wrote a whole thesis about this, if you want to go to the Mills library and check it out [laughs]. It’s a very simple process of recording something to memory and then indexing at different points. But instead of it being a granular process [a form of synthesis in which a sample is separated into ‘grains’], I’m actually skating to different locations within this memory. So there’s this continuous rupture of time that creates these rhythmic patterns, so these melodic patterns start to emerge out of this time processing technique.

I don’t want this to be too odd of a description, but I dream a lot about stuff that happens in the future. I feel like a lot of the processing I’m doing, it reflects my nonlinear perception of time in general. It’s like the sense of déjà vu, when you know you’ve already experienced something. I get that a lot where I’ll remember the dream I had about a certain experience I’m having; I have no idea what’s going on with that. It reminds me of a similar musical process, where I’ll be playing something with my guitar, and then it’ll come back a little bit later in some type of different form or pattern. So, the idea of the fold is more like a continuous time rupture, as opposed to a granulation of sound. A lot of it comes from [Gilles] Deleuze, who has an amazing book called The Fold.

Lastly, can you tell me about Overlap.org?
It’s a project with Jon Phillips, who’s worked closely with the Creative Commons, Kenric McDowell, and Louis Rawlins – those are kind of the main players. Also, Lucky BK has been an awesome helper, helping set up the online shop and things like that. We’re acting as a record label. We’re an experimental label that is doing a lot more than a regular record label does. We’re doing a lot of community building events; we’re doing salons in San Francisco where people come in and show their work and share stuff. We’re doing listening events, parties, and we’re also providing people with a way to share their media online.

If you want to get out of Myspace, Pure Volume, or Facebook, there aren’t really great communities there of experimental media makers. We want Overlap to be a hub for people to, in a sense, have a captive audience to share their work and get feedback about it, and join up with other people who are doing it locally and globally.

In terms of Overlap as a record label, does the community of artists serve as a de facto demo pool for you?
Yes, exactly. When people submit stuff, there’s a Creative Commons license so that people can share freely, and then it also becomes kind of a demo for us to check out, and hey, we might do a release of it. There are five of us in the core of Overlap. We just started promoting it, and we already have a couple hundred users, so it’s going to be fun to see it ramp up.

Interview February 2009

Christopher Willits | Overlap

THE SUBS
Subculture
LLCD5
Lektroluv 2009
09 Tracks. 47mins23secs

There’s plenty to debate about the current crop of brash electro-house acts. Anyone with an ear from sound has been in pain over the walloping overcompression on their albums (and come on guys, recognize the difference between headphones and a club already), and there’s the argument that this whole movement is all style and no substance, more concerned with donning the latest neon fashion atrocities than making something meant to last. Unfortunately, both these common critiques ring true in droves for Subculture, the debut full-length release from It-group The Subs.

To begin with, The Subs have certainly done their homework. Subculture or overflowing with hoover stabs and vocal rushes that attempt to recapture the energy of the early nineties, the last period of popularity for this kind of big, dumb raver fun. But the last generation of ravers also had something to stick in their music, and the majority of Subculture passes by like it’s building up to some incredible peak that never happens. Kiss My Trance, the lead single, is public enemy no.1 here: fat-bottomed synths stacked one after another until the tension renders the track mostly noise, with an uninspired noodling synth progression for a payoff. It’s anyone’s guess as to why this single put The Subs on the map, but scanning the names who’ve supported it brings up the usual nu-rave suspects, including Boys Noize, Fake Blood, Simian Mobile Disco and A-Trak, among others.

The Kiss My Trance formula is the MO for the remainder of the album, which in effect means that The Subs are rolling the dice each time on the long shot that banging on a synthesizer keyboard is going to produce something worth paying attention to amidst all the din of orgasmic shouts and tin-can, too-loud drums. Unsurprisingly, the most interesting piece here is Breathe, a cover of The Prodigy’s hit. The Subs, in keeping with their ethos of doing everything louder and with more bass, attempt to up the ante on intensity of the original, a bad move with results in unnecessary breakdowns and a harsh ducking effect on the bass which comes off like a tacky house cover of a rock track (which it kind of is).

It’s clear that, like many of their contemporaries, The Subs have based much of their formula on the kind of punk and metal where the bigger the better, forget anything melodic or subtle. This isn’t to say that electronic dance music requires subtlety, and the aforementioned Simian Mobile Disco have a pretty decent formula for crafting infectiously overdriven neo-hip-house. But listening to Subs track like My Punk, I get the feeling I’m hearing some kids messing around with some new synth patches and software, rather than a finished product that’s been afforded the necessary thought and detail to make a consistent and memorable release.

The Subs have the style and presentation down, and they have all the right tools to make some epic, noisy electro-house, but Subculture instead finds them content to make adolescent wankery like Fuck That Shit, with a repeated title phrase that goes for shocking (or at least jarring and exciting), but ends up sounding like a naïve teenager throwing a tantrum. This wouldn’t be the biggest issue, were it not for the fact that The Subs’ melodies are similarly immature. Here’s hoping that next time they can budge out of compositional arrested development.

1/5

The Subs | Lektroluv
Buy: CD | iTunes

SYNTHEME
Lasers ‘N’ Shit
ZIQ213
Planet Mu 2009
20 Tracks. 62mins46secs

Buy: CD | LP

At this point, it’s become standard to assume that any new classic-sounding acid act is, in fact, Richard D. James in disguise. The online chatter about the true identity of Syntheme, coupled with the fact that the latest release under the moniker, Lasers ‘N’ Shit, is an engagingly funky course of acid disco, has done little to quell such suspicions. (And how about those track titles – Thraqqwa? Eqxq? More suggestive evidence). In all likelihood, however, Planet Mu is telling the truth in simply stating ‘Syntheme is Louise Wood from outta Brighton’. After all, this Louise Wood has performed live numerous times as Syntheme; RDJ never went so far as to hire actors to perform as The Tuss.

So, assuming that we’ve got the debut full-length form the 24-year-old Wood on our hands, let’s get down to business: this owns. Lasers is a refreshing slap from the Planet Mu camp, moving away from the breakcore and demented dubstep for which the label is known, and instead embracing the kind of squelch-funk last seen in such pure iteration on the second of Luke Vibert’s Kerrier District releases. In the current climate, it’s not hard to find young guns who fetishized disco (hello, entire roster of Kitsune), but said acts have an unfortunate tendency towards style over substance (hello again, Kitsune). There are no ridiculous fashion statements from Syntheme, and while her MySpace page embraces the Day-Glo color shock look popular with ‘nu rave’, Lasers is a bullshit-free zone.

It’s not until the third track, Red, that one truly realizes the extent of Wood’s programming prowess. This kind of acid is deceptively simple – the very act of knowing how to tweak the filters on a 303 or apt emulator brings you halfway there – but the creative perspiration required for the curveball percolation on Red is something else entirely. The majority of the tracks on Lasers work like this; the thematic acid line comes crashing in within the first thirty seconds, temporarily takes over, then exits in around three minutes to allow for the next onslaught. As for the lasers promised in the title? Those descending frequency bombs are plonked about everywhere, but check Csiris for the most beautifully frantic cascade of gradually deranged synth percussion.

Lasers features twenty tracks of raw acid, a daunting task on paper, but it’s to Wood’s credit as an artist (and sequencer) that I never once felt compelled to skip ahead. In addition to her acid chops, Wood’s an adept selector of panting disco vocals. Dig those vocalized cuts on Mimtro, sexy but odd enough to suggest Wood’s intentions lie to the left of pure dance floor fodder. Xwc, meanwhile, features a deep male voice breathing out what sounds like ‘push it’ on repeat, letting off steam over a sweaty electro workout. Wood is also prone to scale things back from the 4/4 kick pound at points, such as on the mysterious minor chords of 144a Acacia Overdrive or FabaceaeCPea’s detuned analog screech and sequenced cymbal and snare rushes (with a vocal sample that, unbelievably, sounds like its gibberish title).

As with all modern acts utilizing vintage analog technology to get at the sounds of classic disco, Syntheme is bound to raise a few eyebrows among the more unabashedly progressive connoisseurs of Planet Mu’s dystopic futurist techno and breaks. In truth, Lasers ‘N’ Shit sounds like something Aphex Twin or Luke Vibert might have cooked up a decade ago, but with grooves this slick it’s a non-issue. Wood’s mined the past to match her own creative zeal, which is something to shut up and think (and/or dance) about.

4.2/5

Syntheme (MySpace) | Planet Mu
Buy: CD | LP

LITHOPS
Ye Viols!
THRILL209
Thrill Jockey 2009
11 Tracks. 45mins28secs

When done properly, live collaborations between visual and audio artists are something special, possessed of the irreplaceable energy of a multi-sensuous experience grabbing the participant. Divorced not only of its live setting, but further of its visual aid, it’s a gamble as to whether the music will be merit its own, isolated appreciation. Jan St. Werner, half of ever-evolving electronic duo Mouse On Mars, takes such a chance by releasing Ye Viols!, a collection of his solo works meant to soundtrack visual artworks, released under his Lithops moniker.

To begin with, Ye Viols! is more experimental than anything from Mouse On Mars. Think of Autechre’s drone-heavy collaborations with The Hafler Trio, then add some glitches and the occasional beat, and a bit more silence, and you’ll have a decent idea of what this record sounds like. Whether it’s of interest to the casual Mouse On Mars fan is up for debate, but it’s a long way from Wipe That Sound in terms of instant gratification. But, gratification is there – Werner just expects us to use our brains more, and work for it. Witness Penrose Ave, a selection unified by one incessant drone, with sparks of what sound like horns and bowed strings flying out left and right. It’s an intense, engaging piece, and unlike other, more ambient works intended to gently soundtrack everyday life, Ye Viols! grabs the listener pretty hard and demands specific moods to fit its agenda.

Yet, Ye Viols! can’t help but feel like less than a proper album. On tracks like Bacchus, the emptiness is noticeable, as Werner sounds like he’s purposefully holding himself back (and, I might add, struggling to do so) for the sake of giving room to a visual counterpart. It’s tempting to look up all the works referenced in the liner notes to Ye Viols!, but it’s an audio release, and should thus be approached and judged as such. Even without the knowledge that these pieces were composed with the intent to score, the degree of musical restraint on tracks like Bacchus or the sparse, grating In Nitro sound like there’s a missing piece we’re not hearing (or seeing).

Luckily, the greater majority of Ye Viols! works on its own, as an exploration of Werner’s more experimental tendencies in a more experiential medium. Having been designed with a performance and an audience in mind, parts of Ye Viols! feel strangely personal, as Handed evokes a celebratory gathering of close personal friends, while Wammo is reminiscent of the more vulnerable and volatile moments of ambient mainstays Fennesz and Tim Hecker. Additionally, there’s a live feel to much of the material here. Whether that’s representative of live recording, or simply a penchant for DSP reverberation, I can’t say, but Graf and Indutech both feature distant sound signatures that suggest a live and improvisational setting. While Indutech possesses the basic foundations of one of Mouse On Mars’ glitch rhythms, it refuses to coalesce into a pattern until the final thirty seconds, spending much of the track popping around unexpectedly.

Mouse On Mars fans are likely to see Lithops are a vanity indulgence of Werner’s; a diversion until the next MoM LP. And, frankly, they’re right. As much as Ye Viols! is studded with moments of ambient beauty and rich, crunchy clicks and cuts textures, it never feels like a unified statement, or like a finished work, but rather a document of Werner’s exploration into purposefully making pieces that are as far from pop music as possible. Fans of more avant-garde ambient and glitch may cotton easier to Ye Viols!, and it is, perhaps, best approached as a playful little experiment.

3.2/5

Thrill Jockey
Buy: CD | LP | iTunes

MELODIUM
Cerebro Spin
ADR071
Audio Dregs 2008
11 Tracks. 50mins40secs

Melodium is too polite.  Laurent Girard, the man behind the moniker, is a master of gentle suggestion and microscopic whisps of mystery.  Girard consistently seems to be asking nicely for an audience, rather than demanding to be heard.  It’s a trite analogy, but like the budding of a rather colorful flower in the middle of a forest, the melodies of Melodium need to be sought out by listeners with patience, an ever-rarer trait in the current musical climate ridden with flash-in-the-blog din.

From the sound of it, Cerebro Spin is an album that was made because Girard had to make it.  If any of these tracks were rushed or frustratingly birthed to fill space, I can’t hear it.  Every piece of this puzzle is significant to Girard in ways that those who don’t know him personally will probably never figure out.  But consider the emotional impact of Cerebro Spin like hearing one side of a telephone conversation: you won’t get the whole picture, but the emotions of the present party are on naked display.  Or, perhaps Melodium’s tender tracks are best approached as Pablo Neruda on poetry – the meaning that the beholder (or listener, in this case) derives for him/herself is more significant and affecting than anything Girard could have outlined in liner notes or lyrics.

One of the pleasant surprises about Cerebro Spin is that Girard is a deft weaver of whichever instruments are at his disposal.  Kissing Disease features what sound like digitally synthesized flutes and horns; normally, this kind of “cheap” sound is difficult to seriously incorporate into music that doesn’t fetishize its stamp of artificial sheen.  Yet, Girard slips them in and out as lead lines, buttressed by his ever-present acoustic guitar in a way that illuminates such cold sounds in a warmer light.  Girard further softens hard percussion noises, such as the jungle-lite groove that pops in and out of Social Phobia, such that drum parts that would be commanding are relegated to an incidental presence, like rain on a windowpane.

There’s a singer-songwriter within Girard, and when he’s allowed out, the effect is an update on classic psychedelic futurists like early David Bowie, or even Donovan.  Girard’s singing teeters a hushed line between vocals and vocalizing.  When, on Vocal Chord Polypus, he repeats a refrain – ‘you can’t touch the bottom / you should go to London’, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but framed by glistening synths and horns, it somehow sounds like good advice.  Not Yet 2 is the most traditional singer-songwriter song of the set, Girard repeating a minor-major resolution with lyrics that paint a picture of soul-searching – ‘you wanted to know yourself’ – slowly overtaken by synth horns.  A beautifully warped take on indie-pop, it’s the best song Badly Drawn Boy never wrote.

As gentle and reassuring as Cerebro Spin can be, there’s a melancholic undercurrent here.  Many of the tracks are titled after diseases and disorders – Social Phobia, Panic Disorder, Kissing Disease.  Closer Scoliosis + Astigmatism has the saddest melody, with a woodwind (either synthesized or played; at this point it becomes hard to tell) weeping on loop and ghostly high-frequency staccato piano plinks overcoming what would otherwise be a triumphantly building drum track.  Perhaps this record is a narrative of imperfections of body and brain, and that cover art does look somewhat like sperm entering a womb.  These minutiae of meaning are, ultimately, left graciously up to the listener – Girard is just too polite.

4/5

Melodium | Audio Dregs
Buy: CD | iTunes