Lately, I can’t stop listening to Burial, an English dubstep artist whose real identity was only uncovered recently in August 2008. His self-titled debut and his second work, “Untrue”, are hypnotic postcards sent from the South London landscape. While it is a place I probably will not visit any time soon, I can already envision it through Burial’s ominous and seductive drum patterns which rise and exhale in the dark under an omnipresent rainfall that covers all of his tracks. And judging by the controversy of his methodoloy, his tracks are masterclasses in electronic beats and technological resourcefulness. It should be no surprise that before he was revealed as William Bevan, there were rumours that he was really Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin. Understandably, anonymity lost its appeal after his work received critical acclaim. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Music Reviews’ Category
Movin’ to Dubstep a la Burial
Monday, June 1st, 2009Death Cab For Cutie at Radio City Music Hall
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
I must admit that I am not a huge fan of Death Cab For Cutie. Many of their songs are hit-or-miss for me. But I do like several songs enough to buy a ticket and support them. The original impetus for attending the DCFC show last night at Radio City Music Hall was a July 2008 EQ Magazine article called “Analog Tape, Blood Sugar, and Random Bits of Genius”. (more…)
Darby Cicci – Ft. Greene’s MINUS GREEN
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 |
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An album that caught my attention recently is Minus Green, a solo project by Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci. With the ability to sing and play the trumpet, flugelhorn, guitar, bass, upright bass, banjo, keys, drums, harmonica, mandolin, glockenspiel, and theramin, Mr. Cicci is a musician most suited to DIY music production, and Minus Green’s lyrical, textured tracks confirm once again that the regime change from expensive studio to home studio production is dynamic and evolving.
The album website states that Mr. Cicci wrote and recorded the entire album from “midnight to 6 AM – obsessively recording and re-recording every instrument on the album alone in his small Brooklyn apartment, using borrowed mics and equipment found on Manhattan sidewalks.” Minus Green, a photographic filter used to remove the “sickening green glow caused by fluorescent lighting,” is a personal ode to Mr. Cicci’s own “attempts to filter out nightmares, drug abuse and illness.” The album features wordy, sometimes incomprehensible, vocals, but always lays consistently a bedrock of compelling sounds (some are more familiar than others) that entice the listener, and occasionally borders on mayhem. Melodies are more sweeping and mysterious than catchy, and the influence of rock’s return to creative songwriting with unusual progressions and chord voicings is unmistakable. One cannot not hear a little Thom Yorke, Morrissey, and even Jim Morrison in this work.
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Left: Mr. Cicci’s Home Studio; Center: Homemade Theramin; Right: (Left) An Alesis Nanoverb turned into a reverb pedal; (3rd pedal from left) A homemade analog delay pedal; (Right) An extensively modified Boss EQ pedal |
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To get a better idea of this one-man operation, I visited Mr. Cicci at his home studio in Ft. Greene. (more…)
Radiohead Concert
Sunday, August 10th, 2008
It was a lot of work to attend the All Point West music festival yesterday at Liberty State Park, NJ. I stood in line for the ferry at Pier 11, then was herded onto the ferry, and then walked about one mile from the dock just to get to the park entrance where I was herded again through the main entrance (they searched us one by one). This all took about two hours.
Fortunately, Radiohead’s 8:30 nightcap show was deeply satisfying and almost made up for the fact that it would take another two hours just to get home. (more…)
Autechre – Quaristice
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
Autechre’s Latest Album – Quaristice
If you know Autechre already, it would save a lot of trouble. If you don’t, then you must take a listen. Autechre, the British electronic music duo comprising Rob Brown and Sean Booth, is bread-and-butter IDM, a stalwart of the musical subculture that uses the studio as its instrument. To understand Autechre, I would recommend first listening to their tome, Tri Repetae (1995). When a friend gave me the utterly nondescript 2-disc set for my birthday (I believe in 2001), I was stunned by the sonic beauty inside. I had never heard anything like it before (even though I later realized that I had heard them in Darren Aronofsky’s film “Pi”). Many albums later, the lasting impression I have of Autechre might be akin to crushing, then wringing out, an empty Coke can and turning the sounds into the elements of the edgiest, coolest electronic symphony.
Autechre’s latest album, Quaristice, deserves comparison to Tri Repetae, because its lush harmonies and captivating movements are nearly as accessible to new listeners as the more dance-able tracks found on that earlier work. On Quaristice you can find the familiar spirit of electronica which makes you stare into space pondering the nature of a particular sound and compels you simultaneously to the point of bodily movement. That, in short, is IDM (Intelligent Dance Music).
Like many of their Warp cohorts, Mr. Brown and Mr. Booth started out as DJ’s. Making mix tapes on cassettes, they gradually mutated their works to carry the stamp of what came to be known as Autechre. With a tweakhead ethic and a resourcefulness that valued any piece of gear they could get their hands on, the two methodically created music that continues to inspire. Seemingly random beats supporting deep and gritty soundscapes are punctuated occasionally by a warm, grinding synth lead. Sampled voices or other objects appear throughout their work but not enough to fully reveal what they are. On EP7 (1999), the rhythm section in “Pir” sounds oddly like a sample of a car door being opened and closed.
Interestingly, Mr. Brown and Mr. Booth have claimed that they do not really know how to write music. But perhaps Autechre’s contribution is that they illuminate the fundamentals of music, that is, anything that has a tone or other sonic quality may be used as the building block for music. In this way, there is no difference between a key struck on the piano and a sample of an object mangled to sound like a note. And while Autechre’s accessibility has not always been consistent, their body of work might just reflect the varied paths one might take if one had free reign to influence a generation of electronic musicians, which is exactly what they have done.
Autechre’s ninth album Quaristice was released in March.