Music Re/View 1

All Photo Manipulations: October 2018

I hereby found the School Of The Heterotopic Review/ from a submarine stationed under the ice shelf// Prepare to be further confused by this guff// All copy shall be filed/ from locales that are the antithesis of the disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory/ amusement arcades of Newquay// The poem I wrote this morning - Barong Dance is about the link between the music and the dance in Balinese/Camborne Dance dramas.

I personally am happy for everything this man gives to us// It's unique// I did not have a seizure which is nice/ given that he probs has hundreds of tracks from the silent period/ ensconced in a space designed to keep their horizons flat and close// For clarity's sake, I meant that in the context of 'tracks we've not heard anywhere else to date'// The least we can expect is a new scale, timbre or frequency// He'd need to know music theory a lot more in order to push the envelope and it seems like he's not interested in that// We should be thankful he's/ wanky in all the wrong ways.

Some may not agree, and that's fine// These new tracks function like fractal outgrowths/ floating like clouds across the aural field/ of that restless micro-level tinkering// The synth line only appears twice across six minutes// It’s very interesting how spread out the stereo is/ replicating each subtle melodic variation or skittering new drum fill// Individual sounds no longer exist to serve a larger system, but are/ percussive chain reactions and elastic triplet patterns being pulled taut into zippers of pure buzz// Then, for good measure, he goes and slaps the time-stretched bark of a reggae deejay over the top of it/ from inside the Michael Faraday Monument in Elephant And Castle.

The T69 was an American medium tank with an oscillating turret// In many ways, it's just what we needed.../ some quirky not-afraid-to-be-accessible stuff with/ vocal sessions in the late-night yacht, and/ all the new stuff he has gotten recently, such as the MIDI-mutant device// Yet, listeners not as keen to electronic music will listen to this and think big deal// There's some truth to that but (at the risk of indulging in pedantry)/ electronic music is very modern and you can literally record it// You could save yourself lots of money buy buying generic ibuprofen which is what nurofen is but without the shiny box// I think it's inherent in the word/ as though it already weren’t hype enough// I suppose the same could be said about me paying £17 for the ltd edition 12”.

I think it's hard to mix this kind of thing// You can't drop the aces straight off, you gotta wait for it// The bowl of cereal is all sog with no crunch// For one thing, it's an adjective as opposed to its verb form "innovate" so the subject (innovator) is/ in a state of disarray as if the alarm for an impending nuclear catastrophe has gone off// A lot of the background acid lines are quiet and the drums/ create a duller, less meaningful sentence structure/ bouncing like ball bearings in an earthquake// There are 150 BPM shifts crammed into mere seconds/ so the kicks don't sound thin// The rhythms are obviously bouncehouse levels of frolic/ but they don't/ add extra kinks to his funhouse-mirror surfaces// My own listening pleasure was heightened subtly by catching the faintest neighing from nearby horses/ and I'll probably come to love the wallops by the end of the weekend.

It's really not that hard to understand. It's not/ a real-time, de-mixing based plug-in// He probably fine-tunes it and adjusts for his purposes/ as an overarching structural shift// Musical intelligence is not linear and is not even a thing/ (and I’ve already spent enough time outlining why I think this is an unreasonable desire)// Someone clearly comes down here regularly to clean up and cut the grass/ as well as modifying reverb characteristics// That allows attenuating or boosting reverb components within a mixed signal of any channel count, including mono sources// It slows down// It’s not quite wrong but definitely not right, either// What we have here, in total, is neither something entirely without precedent/ (running, confusingly, at a different tempo to everything else)/ but neither is it the same old same old/ cray-cray funktersplash.

While he has sustained the same electronic style for the last 15 years, and gotten very good at it/ notation and theory are different things// I would kind of describe this as all the analog lushness/gear paying off in the best ways/ plus a bunch of constantly changing reverb, panning, delay fx, lowpass filtering, tight cirklon triggering, and even motherfucking record scratching// It’s music for Mad Max’s post-apocalyptic parties, rather than your aunt Maureen’s/ perceptionally less important signal components// Come on, people! Where are your standards?!// One day, inevitably, mankind will perish, and likely by our own hand. 

Or something like that. You get the idea.