BUILD BUILDINGS + MARLO BRIGHT
Isomers EP
SKM028
StandardKlik Music 2007
07 Tracks. 21secs44mins
Format: MP3

There Is A Problem With My Tape Recorder announced Ben Tweel back in 2004 as a summary to his debut album, which collected twelve lovingly put together melodic pieces, built primarily from processed guitar, piano and other instruments, and arranged into short atmospheric vignettes. For his most recent effort, New York City-based Tweel has teamed up with Marlo Bright, a musician originally born in Minsk, Belarus who now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and who made his debut MP3 album, Polymers & Monomers, available for free on his own website last year.

The Isomers EP is not a collaborative effort as such, as booth contribute remixes of each other’s compositions. However, the pair tend to work from similar sound sources and, although they adopt a different process here, the result is surprisingly consistent. Ben Tweel reworks four tracks from Marlo Bright’s album, creating fragmented formations over Marlo Bright’s gentle atmospherics and revealing the sharper side of his music. Cast in micro beats and clicks, opening piece City Mist becomes more angular and crisp. His two versions of Bond retain some of the depth of the original, but once again, Tweel gives his versions a much more granular aspect, especially on Bond Intl. where he projects Vlad P’s processed guitars into stuttering sequences and increases the pace in the process. I Don’t Know is left pretty much intact as he simply deploys the rhythmic pattern more prominently, but the effect is potent enough to get noticed.

Marlo Bright’s take on the three Build Buildings tracks, all lifted from There Is A Problem With My Tape Recorder, is quite different. Instead of intensifying the hues and adding texture to the compositions, Vlad P strips down the originals, leaving them exposed in their barest and most vulnerable aspect. While the original version of Notices sparkled with grace, the rendering showcased here is much sparser and introvert, evoking the grey immensity of an arctic landscape caught in a blizzard. A similar treatment is applied on the two version of Test Me, with Vald P creating dense formations out of minimal sound sources, as to cast a dark shadow over the light molecular pieces created by Tweel.

While exploring different sides of a similar work process and approaching the challenge from somewhat radically different angles, Ben Tweel and Vlad P create here a much more coherent collection than one might expect, and although their respective impact is a bit diluted in the process, the EP offers an interesting insight into the work of two like-minded artists.

3.8/5

Build Buildings | Marlo Bright | StandardKlik Music