Brian Foote has been operating the Outward Music Company out of Portland, Oregon for a few years. Their small number of releases have included some singles and full-length releases by Signaldrift, Solenoid, Pulse Programming, and Strategy. Nudge is the result of Foote's collaborations with members of those bands along with people from other Portland-based groups like Fontanelle, Jackie-O Motherfucker, and Nice Nice. While I have to admit that my impression of the outputs by the aforementioned artists and groups have always been rather lukewarm, the combination assembled here far supersedes any expectations.Tigerbeat6
I'm always a big fan of crosssing musical styles, and here, electronic software-based sounds are combined with the musicianship and direction of experienced improvisationalists. The ten songs each exhibit new directions in songcraft, dismissing expectations of how voice, rhythm, and basic instrumentation interact. In a similar move like breakthrough albums by Lamb and Dntel, vocal tracks, like the opener, "Blue Screen," have a very progressive pop sensability, without ever being abrasive, noisy, or too busy. The sweet sounds of Honey Owens voice appropriately match guitar-like distorted delays and less rigid tracks elsewhere on the disc. Instrumental tracks make up the bulk of the record, infrequently utilizing guitar, trumpet, bass, vibes, drums and percussion. Songs like "'Til the Sun Expands" are subdued and subtle, while others like "Love-In Accident" are modern grooves primed for cinematic theme music, never stepping over the top to sound like a music college school jam band. There's plenty of abstract noise and unconventional slightly arrhythmic patterns to keep the humanity intact. One of the things I have actually liked about Outward's output has always been the artwork, and the diagram inside which illustrates the players on each song I must admit is quite clever — with geometric shapes, color coded with letters correspondent to the instruments used.
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