TVO/THE VILLAGE ORCHESTRA: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (Broken20)

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Posted on Oct 15th 2010 01:23 am

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TVO/The Village Orchestra: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

TVO/The Village Orchestra
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
B2001
Broken20 2010
05 Tracks. 94mins01secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD iTunes: DLD

Earlier this year, purveyor of fine electronic and experimental music Highpoint Lowlife announced that they were to cease operating at the end of the year. Around the same time, The Village Orchestra’s Ruaridh Law launched Broken20, a label set up with Production Unit’s Dave Donnelly and Erstlaub’s Dave Fyans. While he has released music on a number of labels, Law had become one of the most highly regarded members of the Highpoint Lowlife stable, first as part of the excellent Marcia Blaine School For Girls entity, then with his own project, The Village Orchestra, under which banner he released what remains to this day one of the finest electronic records of the last ten years, Et In Arcadia Ego, in 2004.

Broken20’s inaugural release comes in the shape of a two-fold release from Law bringing together two of his slightly different projects in one compelling record. Recorded live in Manchester during the Future Everything event, as part of The Hive Collective’s Memories Are Brighter Than Our Digital Debris showcase earlier this year, the first part of this project is The Village Orchestra’s epic hour-long title track, presented here in its raw, unedited version. Based around the idea that memory is a fragile and fleeting thing, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is a sprawling piece which gathers found sounds, voice recordings, brooding electronic textures and dark and complex soundscapes in a gigantic atmospheric collage. After a lengthy silent phase, crackles slowly emerge, at first sounding like static abrasions on a record, but progressively becoming much denser and grainier, before erupting in flashes of radio interferences, and later on, much more abstract noises. It takes a good ten minutes for the first echoes of music to appear, and they do so in layered drone forms. From there on, the mood takes on a much more intense and sombre appearance as more components are added. This is repeated a number of times throughout the piece, and each time, these ominous soundscapes dissipate unexpectedly to reveals spoken sections, melodic vocal motifs or extremely delicate passages.

Law’s parents can be heard at regular intervals throughout, taking it in turn to reminisce about their respective childhood and life or discuss the very idea of memory and how it deteriorates over time. This is echoed in the persistent decay of Law’s sound components, and how they materialise and evaporate without warning, from the initial series of statics and noises and aural resonance of choral work to the beautiful rhythmic patterns found toward the end of the piece or, ultimately, the vocal loop which brings the piece to a close.

While build from the same sound pool than We Can Remember It…, the remaining four pieces differ greatly. Attributed to TVO, these largely swap the deeply atmospheric character of the previous piece for much more immediate grooves. Much shorter and punchier in form, these contrast with the first part of the project by introducing a totally different dynamic. But, while Wasted Memory is a forceful piece of angular minimal techno , Bc7 Memory and Remaindered Memory feed on the moody elements and textures of We Can Remember It…, cast into hypnotic electronic washes set against very linear grooves, creating an increasingly emotional landscape. Closing piece Lost Memory sees Law slowing the pace drastically down again and injecting dubbey pulses which radiate through the whole piece as he develops a fragment of melody set deep within a sumptuous Vangelis-like warm electronic soundscape.

Originally released in digital format, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is also expected to see the light of day in DVD-R format later on in the year, comprising the five tracks and all visuals used during the Future Everything performance. With this new output, Ruaridh Law continues to assert his position as one of the most masterful atmospheric electronic musicians of his generation, and takes the opportunity to introduce a more angular side to his musical persona. If there was need for any confirmation that The Village Orchestra is a much more than just an amateur marching band, then this is it.

4.8/5

The Village Orchestra | The Village Orchestra (MySpace) | Broken20
Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD iTunes: DLD

TVO/The Village Orchestra

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

B2001

Broken20 2010
06 Tracks. –mins—secs

Filed in Albums | Tags: ,
Comments (1)

One Response to “TVO/THE VILLAGE ORCHESTRA: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (Broken20)”

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