Miwon’sdebut for City Centre Offices comes at just the right time of year forme, when a contemplative, quiet record of subtle melodies and soothingrhythms is just what I need to complement the freezing rain andice-covered trees.City Centre Offices
While it’s not quite a pop record, there are some trappings of pop songwriting hidden in Pale Glitterthat keep the album from being just another collection of unoffensive ambienttechno. Miwon mixes it up here between minimal but dance-inspiredarrangements of icy disco and electro pop-flavored tunes with twinklingsynths and effervescent voices, and the whole thing works for me as amid-winter soundtrack. There’s nothing on the record that breaks themold already established by scores of other German techno producers whohave explored the 4/4 beat and its abstraction ad infinitum, but Pale Glitter is another well-done addition to that fold.
Sometimesthere’s no discernable reason to like one piece of music more thananother with which it shares a lot of similarity, and that’s the case Ifind with Pale Glitter. I have probably a dozen other recordsthat I might confuse for this one if tracks from it were pulledrandomly into a mix, and it doesn’t have quite the depth of imaginationof something like Murcof’s beautifully simple but evocative Remembranza (also released this year,) but I still find that every time I take this record for a spin, the journey is somehow rewarding.
Oneof the wonderful things that I’m reminded of when I listen to a recordlike this is that music doesn’t necessarily have to be groundbreaking,innovative, powerful, or indescribably sweeping and beautiful to beeffective. Catch me at another time of year with something else on mymind or some other fascination with sound and I might dismissively markthis record as pleasant but not essential. But with as personal a thingas a connection to music can be, there’s no telling what is or isn’tessential in any substantive way because records will always find earsand brains with which they connect. City Centre Offices is good atpicking these kinds of records out, and for me, Miwon has made aconnection with Pale Glitter, which is something worth celebrating.
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