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The title of the record alone alludes to this intended effect, translating to "The Children of the Summerland." While this is certainly the case however, this is far from a naïve foray into elven territory. Indeed, much of the disc's strength lies in the ample inhabitance of less desirable realms, evoking a balance between tender forest traipsing and, simultaneously, a sense of the deeper mystery just behind the foliage.
The album opens on a glistening and undulatory note with "Ennen Oli Huonommin," whose backing drone grasps at the fluttering bussle of notes emitted atop. The track has the same toying playfulness of labelmate Tomutonttu's output, albeit with a real sense of direction. This forward thrust continues on the brief "Kesa Ja Hymyilevat Huulet," a mix of tinkertoy Casios and a lofty, folkloric vocal line, clarifying the album's role as a collection of songs, albeit highly abstracted, even distracted ones.
The centerpiece of the disc lies in the back-to-back efforts of "Sateet Sun Sielusta" and the album's title track, the most extended efforts here and the ones on which Sanpakkila's constructions are able to fully blossom. The former opens with a brief piano excursion whose increasing density mounts into a full blown meteor shower of trickling lines and hovering drones. Reaching far beyond the skies of many of his contemporaries, the piece is a truly momentous one whose forward thrust continues the consistent sense of trajectory runnning throughout the album.
Following in its wake is the 21-plus minute title track, whose opening vocal lines sway atop a writhing lullaby line before building into a veritable orchestra filling memories of sand castles past. The immense reach of the work is staggering, but never without a sense of intimacy or proximity; this is a series of small moments conjoined by their inherent connections, not a vast singularity too overpowering to remain relatable.
The album's closing track, "Haamut Sun Sydamesta," has a chorus of voices bounding between speakers, rendered foreign by their proximity to the psychedelic mash-up atop them, which I suppose is the idea here. A singer-songwriter album at heart, each piece takes its own path, unfolding without bounds to become a true achievement and one of the most beautiful records of summer.
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The most glib and simplistic (yet extremely accurate) way to describe Angel Falls is “this sounds exactly like some of the better Cocteau Twins songs, but with Liz Fraser’s vocals replaced with guitars.” Of course, I was never a particularly huge Fraser fan, so that is perfectly fine with me. However, the absence of a vocalist does have some negative consequences: pop instrumentals are kind of a hard sell. I suppose perhaps a vocalist humanizes music and creates a stronger connection with the listener, or maybe the presence of lyrics just adds more information and variation to the melody (which makes multiple listens more rewarding), or maybe there is some intangible third possibility that has not even occurred to me yet. I suspect it is a riddle that I will never truly solve. Regardless, I hope this EP finds a suitably receptive audience somehow, as this is some great summer music. It would also be great music to soundtrack a shoegazer barbeque, an alternative prom, a montage of bittersweet romantic memories, or an epic heroin binge. To his credit, Guthrie has presciently and decisively filled those niches before most of the world was even aware that they existed.
Angel Falls consists of four short songs, all of which are quite enjoyable and adhere very closely to the sound that Guthrie is known for: layers of chiming arpeggios and hazy heavily chorused chords, melodic bass lines, and an atmosphere of blissful melancholy. “Camera Lucida” kicks off the EP with all of these elements in maximum abundance and gradually builds from a gentle ringing melody into something that approaches a rock song, while the following track (“Love Never Dies a Natural Death”) is a sleepy gem of slow-motion, quavering beauty. The somewhat darker closing track (“Delicate”) is probably the best piece on the album, as it shimmers, glistens, quivers, and chimes with an elegant, spidery beauty and spacey bliss that one can only get from the guitar of Robin Guthrie. The whole thing is over in less than twenty minutes, which makes this EP a very effective teaser for Guthrie's upcoming new album: rather than overstaying its welcome, Angel Falls left me wishing it hadn't ended so soon.
While I certainly enjoyed Angel Falls quite a bit, it is nevertheless a clear example of why Guthrie has always been a bit of a puzzle to me: it has been over twenty-five years since the Cocteau Twins' debut album was released and there has been very little deviation from that original formula since. It seems strange to me that someone who heavily influenced My Bloody Valentine and played such an integral role in defining the whole shoegazer genre would be so reluctant to expand his very narrow sonic palette. I wonder if Guthrie is in a creative rut or if he just a victim of his own prolific output: it is hard to imagine Kevin Shields being as revered as he is if Loveless had been followed by half a dozen more albums in roughly the same vein. Then again, perhaps Guthrie just has a very specific vision of how he wants to sound and has spent his entire adult life trying to perfect it. Or maybe his more adventurous impulses are vented in his filmmaking and soundtrack work. Or maybe he has been saving up all of his wild and brilliant ideas for next Violet Indiana album (if it ever comes out). Yet another possibility is that I need to stop overanalyzing his creative arc and just be happy that he is sitting in France quietly amassing a large body of great songs- it’s hard to say. Regardless, a new release from Guthrie is always welcome and 2009 is packed full of them: he has a new full-length (Carousel) dropping in August and another EP (Songs to Help My Children Sleep) slated for October.
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In the case of Sever, the elegance of Haynes' noise can be traced to its deceptive simplicity. On the surface this record is a grinding, crunchy, and faded environmental recording rescued from brittle tapes discovered by Haynes. Each of the four pieces that compose Sever appear to reveal the natural world reclaiming what it had lost with the advent of science and industry. It's as though someone took a small microphone and tape recorder into the guts of industrial factories and abandoned machine shops and captured their internal breakdown. Beneath this veneer, however, is a cinematic and carefully constructed experience. The convincing nature of Haynes' noise belies the fact that Sever is a patient and incredibly well-structured record. More than just a collection of unnerving ambience, it is a psychologically heavy record with plenty of gloom and despair to go around.
Haynes' compositional style has the power to convince; he creates a believable world and then populates it with familiar events. Upon hearing objects move in the stereo field, the sense that objects should also be moving in the room is accomplished. Similarly, the crunch of leaves, the tumbling of dust and rock on pavement, and the sound of wind through trees is manifested by Haynes' various techniques. Whether or not he actually used samples of such events is ultimately unimportant. Haynes is adept at making his noise seem very real, very organic, and very familiar. All the while Haynes siguides his army of samples and loops with a near-invisible hand. He utilizes a broad range of dynamics to create verses and crescendos of noise. Using erratic rhythms, fractured hiss, and the whir of electricity, Haynes weaves together a stage upon which the rest of the album sits. The rustle of industrial and organic detritus is sometimes contrasted against this background, along with radio static, thundering metal, and even the melodic ring of bells. They all provide a measure of unpredictability and dynamic variety, and they also amplify the record's uneasy creepiness.
And that brings me to the psychological power of Sever. While the narrative of decay and time run a red thread through this record, there's also a feeling of dread and expectancy coursing through it. Haynes' environments have an emptiness attached to them, as though they are waiting for something or someone to come along and fill them up. As a result, a great deal of anticipation and tense nervousness finds its way onto this record. Perhaps Sever's focus on decay is the source of this discomfort. Or perhaps the music renders the void of decomposition and death too effectively; either way, a loneliness and an increasing sense of helplessness builds up over the record's 52 minutes. After realizing it was there, I expected Haynes to somehow eradicate or cure it. Instead, he leaves it to hover over the room in silence after the record ends. Nothing is fulfilled and there's no sense of completion; only a bleak heaviness remains when the music stops. It is neither pleasant nor comfortable, but it is powerful and unique and entirely worth experiencing.
The first 100 copies of Sever come with a bonus CDr titled Severed. This CDr contains a recording of a sound installation that was used, in part, to develop the record.
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With Nadja, I have a tendency now to sit back and wait to see what others think of a release before charging in. As much as I like them, there’s only so much of their slowed down shoegaze that I need. However, their oddball releases invariably are worth getting and Clinging to the Edge of the Sky is no exception to that rule. Baker’s drumming and Buckareff’s bass sketch out a brooding backdrop for Baker’s Twin Peaks-infused guitar; the music here sits more comfortably beside Bohren & Der Club of Gore rather than with Nadja’s usual musical companions like My Bloody Valentine and Boris.
Unfortunately, at one side of an LP the amount of music leaves me starving for more. I’m not a fan of etched LPs as unlike a picture disc, you never put the etching side up on the record player so rarely do they get much attention. It would be nice if Nadja explored this style a little more or at least bring some of this noir shading to their usual sound. As it stands, Clinging to the Edge of the Sky is a brilliant, if brief, anomaly in their catalogue.
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Sunn O))) and Pan Sonic’s version of “Che” from Suicide’s classic self-titled album is a surprisingly straight cover of the song. Based on Sunn O)))’s previous “covers” like their reinvention of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on Flight of the Behemoth, I was expecting an almost unrecognizable mass of guitar noise but they have kept “Che” in an instantly familiar form. Joe Preston does a mean vocal as Sunn O))) create a powerful guitar-led interpretation of the original’s organ riff. Vainio adds a layer of electronic grit to the piece, finishing off an already perfect cover.
On the flip side is an unreleased original from Vega, “Thirteen Crosses,” which was recorded live last year. I have never had a huge interest in Vega aside from the older Suicide material and this song is not begging me to investigate his recent work further. The snarls by numbers piece could be by any number of Suicide imitators and as such is a letdown considering this is actually Vega himself doing it. This is followed by an acoustic rendition of “Goodbye Darling” by Burroughs. Although not a stellar performance, it is a competent and slightly unsettling take on this song with more echoes of Michael Gira than of Alan Vega.
Hardcore fans of Suicide have probably already got their hands on this EP but I would call this essential listening for Sunn O))) lovers as this is one of their better excursions outside of their full lengths.
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Dialogue Ordinaire avec la Machine translates to “Ordinary Dialogue with the Machine” and sees Ferrari and Yannick Gornet “in conversation with the machine.” Like many artists in the early '80s, they were experimenting with what the sampler was capable of. Their voices are cut up, processed and bounced across the audio landscape. Clanging rhythms and mechanical, atonal melodies run through the piece, each one sounding like a soundtrack to a 1960s Soviet cartoon about machines. The piece culminates with “Love Song with the Machine” where they explore the erotic possibilities of the machine (in a time long before the words “porn” and “computer” were synonymous) to an ever changing and persistent beat. The human voice is treated in a way to make it more machine-like as the piece (and the act of lovemaking) progresses; this is more musique organique rather than concrete.
On “Sexolidad,” Ferrari has captured his idea of sexual sensuality and anatomy in music. This was originally to be part of a larger suite along with “Comme une Fantaisie Dite des Réminiscences” (which was released on the album Piano-Piano on Montaigne) but Ferrari abandoned his plans for the suite. The pieces are linked but “Sexolidad” has a far bolder and dramatic sound than “Comme une Fantaisie...” thanks to the use of a 15 piece orchestra instead of a pair of pianos. Throughout “Sexolidad” Ferrari nods to Stravinsky; blocks of sound do battle with each other with the energy of the music threatening to spill over at any moment. There is an accompanying text to the music which Ferrari intended the listener to read during the piece but it works just as well without it (but obviously is a lot more fun reading the pervy Frenchman's words).
What always has and continues to draw me to Ferrari is his sense of playfulness combined with a superb ear for audio adventure and Dialogue Ordinaire avec la Machine/Sexolidad is a fine example. Both pieces demonstrate the fun of Ferrari and Dialogue Ordinaire in particular shows how he always embraced new technology in his own inimitable way. As I seem to finish off every Ferrari review I do, hopefully there are hours more of his work left unreleased. If Tupac and Muslimgauze can be such endless fountains of posthumous work, with any luck Ferrari will have equally a productive career now.
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- Dialogue Ordinaire avec la Machine (Part 1)
- Dialogue Ordinaire avec la Machine (Part 5)
- Sexolidad (Part 2)
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June 23rd was the official release date for 'Leaves of Life'.
Leaves of Life is the essential collection of songs by some of today’s most creative Indie Folk musicians. This record brings together unique and contemporary artistic voices to create an evocative and stunning collaboration; with all proceeds from the sales of this record going to benefit important relief programs in Africa, and other communities in great need around the world.
Curated and produced by Buck Curran of the Alt-folk duo Arborea, Leaves of Life features 19 exclusive songs by artists Alela Diane, Devendra Banhart, Marissa Nadler and Black Hole Infinity, Fern Knight, Shanti Curran (Arborea), Rio en Medio, Larkin Grimm, Mi and L’au, Starless and Bible Black, Silver Summit, Micah Blue Smaldone, David Garland, Citay, Big Blood, Mica Jones, Eric Carbonara, Ora Cogan, Cursillistas, and Magic Leaves…along with the beautiful art work of musician Hanna Tuulikki. This project hopes to further inspire people around the world to join in vital artistic and social efforts to make a better life for all of us.
In addition the digital release of the compilation will include special bonus tracks by Jozef van Wissem, Laurent Brondel, Denise Dill, and Plains.
To purchase the cd in the U.S. please visit Darla Records
http://darla.com/index.php?fuseaction=e4_ecom.ecom_superitem_detail&item_cat_id=36667
All proceeds from the sale of this record go to the World Food Program!
Here's a few fact you don't want to know:
Every 6 seconds a child dies of hunger
5 dollars will feed one baby for one year
Over 850 Million people do not get enough to eat
Every day 25,000 people die of hunger; 14,000 of them are children
if you would like more information about the world food program please visit: www.friendsofwfp.org
Please help us get the word out about this record compilation- every cd that sells will help!!!
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Eerie Fragrance (along with Climax Golden Hiss) is considered to be one of the first real, albeit formative and fumbling, manifestations of the otherworldly and unique Climax Golden Twins aesthetic. The “band” at the point of these sessions consisted of only Jeffery Taylor and Rob Millis, however, as their career progressed the duo added new members and collaborators and eventually evolved far beyond their sloppy noise roots into the realm of sublime ambiance and serious art (perhaps culminating in their 2001 soundtrack for Brad Anderson’s Session 9). The core duo of Millis and Taylor are also responsible for curating Dust-to-Digital’s amazing Victrola Favorites compilation, so their growing renown as respected musicologists is quite likely to someday eclipse the band’s influence (Millis in particular is actively hastening that process by lecturing and making films for Sublime Frequencies).
While thankfully CGT’s deeply aberrant nature has not significantly waned with their growing professionalism and success, the band’s self-professed “free hillbilly noise epilepsy” and ideologically punk roots have become much less prominent with age. As such, the clumsy (yet inspired) amateurism of their early work still holds a great deal of charm (and is much more similar in spirit to Seattle’s other bastions of cultish eccentricity, The Sun City Girls). While Eerie Fragrance undeniably lacks the nuance, cohesion, and beauty of more recent Twins releases, its crackling, skewed, free-form experimentation is still quite compelling in its own right.
All of the tracks included here are essentially formless, disquieting miasmas of ethnic field recordings, long-forgotten snippets from 78s, mangled and distressed tapes, found sounds, and sludgy garage rock flailings. My favorite track is the opener, "EF Part One," which is memorably constructed of rumbling de-tuned bass, eerie flutes, a child’s voice repeatedly stating “listen…I’m really sorry,” squiggling and squelching noise blasts, and meditative Chinese percussion. It is followed by the much more abrasive and deranged “EF Part Two,” which begins on a deceptively muted note with a slowed-down and pitch-shifted reggae sample. The side ends with the brief, but dense, lunacy of “Toyland,” which combines calliope, children’s records, and early comedy records into a flurry of ADD-addled, anachronistic disorientation.
The second side begins with the haunting "EF Three," which centers around creepy, quavering string samples combined with field recordings from some mysterious foreign street environment, and a host of oft mangled and vaguely Indian stringed instrument improvisations. That atmosphere of dread, however, is dissipated with “EF Part Four,” which begins with some dissonant ringing and layered Chinese or Indian percussion before degenerating into a cathartic gale of static, rumblings, and radio noises. There are two more tracks on the side, “Cowboy Weather” and “What was Pointless,” but it is very difficult to tell where one track ends and the next begins: the important thing is that neither the quality nor the unrelenting lysergic weirdness show any signs of lessening.
Eerie Fragrance is a charismatic and idiosyncratic album that sounds quite like nothing else I have heard: this is the musical equivalent of taking an enormous amount of cold medication and watching television in the middle of the night, while constantly flipping through channels, flickering in and out of consciousness, and having very strange and disjointed dreams (albeit in a good way, of course). This is a rather instructive example of how great art can originate from the most minimal of materials.
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Too often, supergroups seem to realize themselves as a disappointment, an over-distillation of the contributors' various styles into something that neither pushes the members' discographical depth nor reveals much about the other projects with which they are associated. With little room for development and the expectations of already loyal fans, the artists are pigeon-held into producing something that will neither harm their more consistent group's reputation nor displease anyone who they have already won over.
Needless to say, that is not the case here. With such a large number of musicians contributing (eleven are given credit here) there is little room for any one individual's voice to be central, making this a truly collaborative and, as a result, exciting effort. With such diverse representatives, the sound here is instead based in a loose, improvisational style that hardly forsakes the members' pasts, but certainly creates a new environment for them to make music.
Organized by date of recording, the album tracks about nine months of music making, from the brief New Years day psychedelicism of "Implicate"—whose bent guitar tones and computerized stretches weave an unsettling view of the coming year—to "Oxygen Path," the longest track here and one steeped in tough to pin down rhythmic patterns creating a dense, mulch-like underbelly to the eventual breakbeat drumming that drives it forward.
In between, the unit has some wonderful moments, many of which are found in cooperation with Eva Puyuelo Muns and Alejandra Deheza's vocals. Treated delicately by various other members, the vocals serve to ground the work's busy nature, allowing for the group's full potential to come to the fore. Pieces like "There Has to Be" and "This Air I Breathe" take on a Reichian quality as they turn repeated phrases into the rhythmic basis for the rest of the work.
The counterpart to the opening "Risil Intro," "Risil Outro" closes the disc in fitting fashion, representing much of what the group seems to seek. With delicate instrumental finesse the sound resides somewhere between computer music, techno, post-rock, krautrock and drone well represented, but also overcome. Without sacrificing any of their individual capabilities, the unit creates a sound that is far more concerned with collaboration than demonstration. The result is a loose and unstructured feel, but one well conceived in its overall sound. In other words, it lies exactly where this sort of collaboration should, neither forsaking nor conflating its members' previous output, but infusing each with further depth and appreciation.
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Spiral Insana is a series of 20 abruptly starting and stopping musical interludes which are comically and unhelpfully presented in just three tracks, which makes it an almost hopeless endeavor to determine exactly which piece is playing at a given time without a pen and a lengthy attention span. Despite the demented and sprawling nature of the material covered here, there are many recurring sounds and themes strewn throughout the album, which makes me feel like it might be a musical analogue to Raymond Queneau’s Exercises In Style (which describes the same incident 99 times with wildly differing tone). Of course, sometimes it all sounds completely random too. I suspect only Stephen Stapleton knows if there is a coherent theme linking the various components of this song suite together. Two of the "songs" included here were not on the original album ("Mourning Smile" and "Ship of the Dead"), but have been present since the 1997 United Dairies reissue. They fit seamlessly into the surrounding material, so I suspect they are belated enhancements rather than mere bonus tracks. Not that it matters, though- it is a wild and compelling ride regardless of its theoretical foundations (or lack thereof).
Spiral Insana opens (with "Sea Armchair") in characteristically unmusical NWW fashion with some arrhythmic scraping metal sounds, but then something very unexpected happens: the metal is overpowered by a haunting and warm (almost ambient) synth progression and a weirdly reggae-influenced, yet martial, rhythmic clanging. Then it all jarringly cuts out and it is clear that I am, in fact, listening to Nurse With Wound and not an Angelo Badalamenti album. Oddly, that same synth progression immediately starts up again, only this time the metallic sounds are replaced by manipulated feedback and gradually intensifying amplifier hum…followed by yet another violent cut. Now shuffling jazz drums slink out of the speakers, but are quickly bludgeoned to death by very loud, mangled, and heavily tweaked pipe organ samples. Another jarring cut (and so on…ad infinitum).
The interludes seem to grow weirder and darker and less interrelated as the album progresses, which gives the album a disquieting arc (as if it is all spewing forth from an increasingly desperate and disjointed mind). Many of the varied interludes are noisy, fragmented, and somewhat abrasive, but there is always a playful sense of mischief lurking in the shadows, ready to blunder into the steadily darkening fever dream at any second. Feedback, distorted looping amp hum, metallic noises, blaring pipe organs, treated voices, and the beautiful opening synth progression are all recurrent motifs, but they are regularly disrupted by all manner of surrealist mindfuckery: duck noises, discordant flute pile-ups, a mournful and heavily reverbed French horn, a lonely oboe, tribal percussion that sounds like it is being played on a bucket, roosters, kazoos, and field recordings of birds all make brief and unexpected appearances. I was especially (and pleasantly) startled by a very jaunty honky tonk piano interlude, an elegiac bagpipe procession, and the distant and heavily reverbed female vocalist that closes the album with solemn dignity (although it sounds like she is being assisted by an particularly unhappy dinosaur at times). In fact, that closing piece ("Nihil") may be one of the most beautiful and nuanced works in the entire NWW catalog.
It is never easy to tell how much influence collaborators have in shaping what a finished Nurse With Wound album sounds like, but it seems likely that Spiral Insana owes at least some of its density, fractured lunacy, and surprising musicality to the handful of talented contributors involved. The liner notes shed very little light on this, although they unhelpfully specify that David Jackman (Organum) contributed “splutter" (it remains a mystery whether Mr. Jackman's spluttering and banjo playing were instrumental in the formation of the album or merely source material for Stapleton to incorporate into a fully-formed vision). Also, I expected the backbone ambient synthesizer theme to be the work of Sema’s Robert Haigh, but he is only credited with guitar, so all bets are off (I have perhaps grossly underestimated Stapleton’s technical abilities as a multi-instrumentalist). Regardless of the actual mechanics involved, this is a brilliantly skewed and excellent album that has not faded with age one bit.
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Let's Make Better Mistakes Together is structured like a traditional LP, where the first five tracks are the side of the record emphasize shimmering, high frequency passages of treated guitar and piano before transitioning to the darker, murkier second side. "Shimokita" layers swirling bell-like tones over subtle field recordings of conversations, the ethereal layers of bell are paired with similar orchestral flourishes. "Raspberry Girl" floats along similarly, with drawn out harmonium/harpsichord-esque tones with minor changes throughout, the most notable of which is a subtle layer of digital static that doesn’t detract, but adds additional warmth to the already light piece.
Starting with "The Sketch," featuring Adrian Klumpes, the disc beings to take an obvious darker turn. The gentle glassy tones from before are replaced with droning bass pulses, and even with the warmer synth passages the piece has a cold, distant feel. Dissonant piano playing is overshadowed by the glitchy/digital noise elements here, and jarring, harsh field recordings cut in just as the piano takes a turn towards the jazzy. The short “So” is similarly bleak, leaning again on the low end and processed/filtered noise is all around, though the purer tones stay the focus throughout. The closing "Night" is the culmination of this virtual "side" of the album, showcasing digital crackles with bass drones that, for all its darkness feels more mournful than tense or terrifying. The second half of this disc is the more dynamic one in my opinion, with the darker textures being more varied than the sustained, more rudimentary lighter ones on the first half.
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Painting Sky Together, which was released prior, has a greater emphasis on field recordings as an instrument, but also sways more in the lighter and airy direction as the first half of Let’s Make… Opening and closing with "Your Whiteness" and "Movie," both pieces feel related, leading off with repeated electronic fanfares and string-like passages, though the former has a light layer of clicks and static while the latter is more varied and features field recordings of running water. "Freckled Cheeks" is similar with its hovering electronic tones and synthetic pings, alongside a bit of Rhodes piano. The static here is somewhere between digital and organic, and provides a nice counterpoint to the otherwise sterile crystalline sounds.
While never reaching points as dark as the previous album, "Tokyo" does have more chaotic field recordings and lower register piano notes that are overshadowed by the natural sounds, which ends with gentle reversed tones and sounds of walking through nature at the end. Similarly, the physical movement is also present in "Agata’s Film," which has a dynamic sound over conversations and icy electronic swells. It departs more from the other tracks about midway through, where it becomes a collage of electronic loops and sequences that are far less pure than the other pieces.
Both "So Fragile" and "Mi.Ti" are also somewhat dissonant, with the previously unadulterated tones being cut up and roughly panned between channels, the former layering in warm static while the later has clicks and pops that resembles a rope being slowly tightened to dangerous levels. The long “January” also has layered tones that become more and more raw as it goes on, closing with raw field recording sounds that are harsher than any other elements in the track.
Considering his youth and upstart discography, Bednarczyk is already demonstrating his skills at composition as well as an ear for pure, droning tones. Between the two albums my personal preference is more towards Let’s Make… because I prefer the darker elements of his sound, and those pieces are also more dynamic and varied. Both, however, are great on their own merits.
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