Music Re-View 15

 

All Photo-Manipulations: October 2022

I get excited every time we enter a new phase - we've been through 4 or 5 so far I think, none of which I could foresee in advance. Any sense of foresight I thought I had has gone out of the window. It's hard enough just keeping up. He's been a solo artist par excellence for over a decade remember - his albums are rare, but he's always managed to retain a unique - often unsettlingly minimal signature, and distil his wealth of ideas into a coherent, timeless narrative. Now he is  forced to work harder to hold the listener's attention, like a Ritalin-pumped arcade machine. We've always known that the division between politics and aesthetics was a false one, but the corporate elements here suggest that economics itself is a superseding aesthetic structure, one that develops forms virtually on its own out of raw humanity. It rapidly becomes clear this is more military: gun fingers high, it's a nightclub-death-march, whose political intent is like a shaky transmission of a now centuries old Diana Ross cut.

In the same vein as much of his previous work, there are no standout songs that would ever be at home without the context of an album. Occasional tracks suffer from absenteeism, but there are true moments of virtuosity. The weird friction here is just how personal it remains, how easy it is to toggle from the micro to the macro, from subjective empathetic mourning to a hyperrationalist inhuman perspective. The album throws horror soundtrack, sample library and j-pop records into a no man's land between grime, early dubstep and Chicago footwork. It's built on an historical electro continuum that binds the more strung-out aspects of bleep-rave, grime, trap-rap and footwork, with elegant little jazz and soul licks flickering like half-memories. It's a typically bumpy ride overstuffed with ideas and full of mind-bending rhythmic nuggets - a bumping bass line and a weird, almost annoying melodic figure that sounds like a helium balloon deflating. Intermittent shrieks and caws echo as if bouncing off wet concrete, the sounds of animals left in an abandoned zoo when every other person on the planet has been obliterated by an apocalyptic cataclysm. A muted shriek, somewhere between evening crickets and a wailing siren, sustains the barest of the atonal melody's tension.

This is not a light record. Birthed and incubated in London's most soot-smeared corners, it's a growling, menacing record, the sort of psycho-spiritual purge no subsequent contextual framework can subsume. It's sci-fi speculation but also gritty realism: dance music that does more, tugging on brains not just Friday night heart strings. This concept led the ex-philosophy lecturer to investigate the uneasy juxtaposition that terminal patients in hospital beds find themselves in, teetering on the edge of life in both a historical and mathematical context. In short, it's equal part body-horror, mind-fuck and drug trip. It's also the sound of an all-consuming global aesthetic and political structure that transforms the specificities of individual narratives into fleeting trajectories within a larger assemblage. Negation and omission here become the productive acts, the affective charge of the album found in the impression left from an element's absence. The concept of loss remains unarticulated, diffuse rather than pointed, environmental rather than declarative. I cannot listen to it as a classic record, picking my favourite tracks and skipping the fillers. It is much more like the hyperpolished non-binary transhumanism of certain strains of contemporary futurist sonology from the realms of hyperpop and beyond. The idea of drones replacing samurai brings up the question of what happens to us, or what will we do, when our presence is no longer required on this earth - these visions of disappearing humanity are all too human.

The closing credits roll in. You have managed to escape and survive. Ultimately though, the listening experience does not transport me into a hyperstitional future. Human emotion cracks through the album's fibreglass facade. The story is a mix of current events, history and speculation. I feel more catapulted into an alternative past, which was polluted with fragments and ideas from the future we are inhabiting at the moment. Most people's reality is far from a piano break, and the futurism, the dystopia is just extrapolation from that fact. As two mirrors are moved closer together inside a vacuum (which, contrary to popular belief, is assumed to be filled with electromagnetic waves), they create a true vacuum between them. It's probably not the optimum sonic hygiene for a critical listening experience, but it feels oddly appropriate. Sometimes it feels like one of the best records I've heard in recent memory, other times I wish it would just get to the point faster. But I think that's by design.

Musicians tend to be generous in death, in that they leave parts of themselves behind that continue to exist in a kind of domain of musical digital immortality. Anyone who buys this will receive the digital files immediately.

Music Re-View 13 [Proustian in_sert]

 

All Images: North Leicester, March 2022

I am glad I gave this a listen/ the fundamental lack of certainty that's colouring everyone's thoughts now has got me doubling down on my usual worries/ I was skeptical of listening at first due to/ associations of Genesis/ as well as/ an almost impossible high wire act/ in which case, it's possible I've completely missed the point [in entering into contact with a world for which we are not made, which seems formless to us because our eyes do not perceive it, meaningless because it evades our understanding, which we can attain only through a single sense] I should make plans to revisit this project later in the year with a different mindset. And if it's not/ some kind of escape/ well, then that's OK too/ we can definitely recommend this album for those who want/ cheeses of concentrated revival/ and let's be clear - many of us "electro introverts" are envious of the extroverts who enjoy/ the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

This is music not made by marketing teams or in boardrooms searching for a demographic to fleece, it is music made by/ birds - birds and sirens/ no boxes being ticked, no second guessing trends, just a welcome flashback to a/ certain Goldilocks zone of wishful reverie - not too heavy, not too light, neither forlorn nor jubilant/ we hear the bubbles swell into life and burst almost immediately, their existence necessarily fleeting/ it's hard to think of another electronic musician whose work feels so tactile/ melodies are woven together as if their respective elements were [multiform, undivided, smooth and colliding like the purple tumult of the waves when the moonlight charms them and lowers their pitch by half a tone] you get a real impression of time's palpable dilation with errant voice messages and recordings of life's activity/ largely lost in the translation of his current temper/ but this first impression should not be considered definitive [the only one which is purely musical, immaterial, entirely original, irreducible to any other order of impression] as we will see/ a cultural-leaning deliverance was just what was exuded at/ 3 a.m.

The first sound,  low, humming drone, hovers around the ears as if sitting on a primeval airplane, disappearing into clouds [an impression of this kind, is for an instant, so to speak, sine materia. No doubt the notes we hear then tend already, depending on their loudness, and their quantity, to spread out before our eyes over surfaces of various dimensions, to trace arabesques, to give us sensations of breadth, tenuousness, stability, whimsy. But the notes vanish before these sensations are sufficiently formed in us not to be submerged by those already excited by the succeeding or even simultaneous notes] melodies are woven together as if their respective elements were concocted only to be synthesized by way of his imagination/ yet it takes a very long time to develop, and risks verging on dull/ is the album supposed to be this reflective and introspective? Possibly/ the energy here isn't exactly new, nor all that energetic, but it is aglow with/ the tock of snare and bass drum, a vocal loop that just slips beyond comprehension/ harpsichord, harp/ dainty blips and pops/ wistful timbres and delectable breaks/ from our concrete prisons and tie-wearing shackles.

Even if you're a vinyl purist make sure you get the download of this album and take it walking with you. It will help [to envelop with its liquidity and its 'mellowness' the motifs that at times emerge from it, barely discernible, immediately to dive under and disappear, known only by the particular pleasure they give, impossible to describe, recall, name, ineffable - if memory, like a labourer, working to put down lasting foundations in the midst of the waves, by fabricating for us facsimiles of these fleeting phrases, did not allow us to compare them to those that follow them, and to] elevate ourselves from our bone and flesh/ that little bit more/ electronic musicians have always tapped into a higher plane and we as listeners were happy to [differentiate them] we're the sort of folks who would rather crack open a track to examine what's inside at a respectable time of night/ I think it is definitely a better record for the daytime though. Probably dawn would be ideal. Listen to it outside, if you can/ the sun rises over the water. The endorphins flow.

Includes excerpts from: Marcel Proust, 'In search of Lost Time, Volume 1, The Way by Swann's' (Trans. Lydia Davis), London, Penguin Books, 1913/2002

Music Re-View 12.1 (Remix)

 

All Images: February 2022

[Audio Transcript]:

A merchant garden and drinks poured I would not want to be in the story I am listening to it feels like from subway subway you pass recuperando undervalued ignores collapse into noise a subprime you can hear that one flooring stream-of-consciousness interstitial anthems expressionistic and open-ended Delirious the deliberate newton die verwendung Google when is your dramatist gestalt weird 

but wait human give the sense of journeying through an unfamiliar neighbourhood we're talking instrumental songs field recording experimental sounds skip blind County Johnson has taught channel 02 anticipating impending interruption of the global media system I fell for it and fell hard during the emotional turmoil last police brutality many found themselves asking whatever happened to the artist that could make music feel like it was made just for me 

concrete statements become more legible and it become somehow infected by urban dwelling general resorty organic o'nella a dark ambient melodies glide by landscape voices but they will only give you scrap from the banquet table to possibly be human wandering the streets making very human noises they sneeze cough inhale robot place you write at the edge of the production pushing the envelope another couple of inches into the places that you hesitate to go it feels as though you are really close up like being in the room sharing the same headphones with the Creator making the atmosphere is cold and dry microphone sounds at times like an explosion 

far away there is a wavering impossible to talk about the present without thinking of Lost futures it's raining a lot thing is not quite right in the story we are listening to the trans human is steam of a stable cyberpunk future government tyranny and genre spanning collection of extraordinarily detailed interludes I meant to use wiser already there's no one else making records like this it is better it sounds anything else quite like this and something that could be nice or coins or something else metallic rubbing against each other tap here to remove ads Audible: audiobooks & podcasts ads by Google stop seeing this ad why this ad?

Music Re-View 12

 

All Images: Central & North-East Leicester, February 2022

[The muted harrumph of a throat being cleared/ cans being opened and drinks poured]/ I would not want to be in the story I am listening to/ it feels like a depiction of the slow understanding that one's idealized love is slowly ebbing away beneath the day-to-day destruction of reality/ no opening line or expository declaration materializes in its wake/ remember when you disinfected each plastic bag after grocery shopping?/ the result is addictive/ yet disconcerting for reasons unknown; a soft gliding mixture/ from subway to subway, divining the thoughts of the denizens of each building you pass/ you feel as if you are Bruno Ganz hovering from apartment to apartment, you pass/ recuperando un approccio documentaristico che racconta la dimensione urbana attraverso un collage di suoni/ the forgotten, undervalued individuals that inhabit the night/ foresee that, as all the signals collapse into noise, a sub-primordial chaos entity will arrive.

Mixtapes/ let's quickly talk about mixtapes/ from the first track, you can hear that once-roaring stream of consciousness slow to a trickle and freeze over/ the second you change the language to mixtape, nobody cares/ these are interstitial anthems, expressionistic and open-ended, delirious but deliberate, attuned to the drift and dreamstate of the current moment/ nach einem guten Jahr Pandemie bei Nachdenken uber die eigene Lage, bei dem Gewohntes neu in den Blick genommen und in Frage gestellt wird/ but wait, what exactly is a mixtape?/ it's human, but in a way that alienates rather than comforts, using processed, wounded-sounding samples to give the sense of journeying through an unfamiliar neighbourhood/ (we're talking instrumentals, songs, spoken word, field recordings, experimental sounds, skits)/ Blind Humpty Johnson has taught Channel Zero to anticipate an impending interruption of the global media system/ I fell for it and fell hard/ during the withering emotional turmoil of last year's uprisings against police brutality/ many found themselves asking: whatever happened to the artist that could make music feel like it was made just for me?

As the album progresses, concrete statements become more legible, and it becomes possible to delineate/ reverb-dunked guitar coming up against low scrapes of what sounds like cello and TV buzz/ the dubstep artist has gone silent/ electronic music, has become somehow infected by urban dwelling: beats are now part of our casual experience/ ogni brano ha un paessaggio timbrico interiore, sebbene il sound generale risulti organico nella sua dark ambience/ melodies glide by, carefully panning over a detailed landscape with a wide-angle lens/ they mostly resemble the progressive rock staple of the late 60s, where organs bridged an uneasy, at times even blasphemous, apocalyptic edge/ there are voices/ but they will only give you scraps from the banquet table/ they are too distorted and high-pitched to possibly be human. Empty corpses wandering the streets making very human noises: they sneeze, cough, inhale/ robots/ place you right at the edge of/ the production/ pushing the envelope another couple of inches/ into the places that you hesitate to go/ it feels as though you are really close up; like being in the same room, sharing the same headphones with the creator/ structure feels like/ a fishbone, rigged up to be kind of skitty, sharp.

Behind the concrete facades, there's a world of our own making/ the atmosphere is cold and eerie. The wind hitting the microphone sounds at times like an explosion far away.  There is a wavering sub-bass/ why shouldn't there be? The world has degraded to a dystopian shadow realm that's made it impossible to talk about the present without thinking of lost futures/ it's raining a lot/ as I write these lines/ it quickly becomes clear that something is not quite right in the story we are listening to/ the transhumanist dream of a stable Cyberpunk future, which seemed within arm's reach throughout the last decade, is now no more than a fractured desire/ it's somewhat of an occult idea, these parallel societies that create their own belief systems and ritualistic mythology/ nichts davon erscheint redundant/ we will inevitably look back at this time with grim memories about corrupt governments, tyranny and/ a genre-spanning collection of extraordinarily detailed interludes/ am Ende ist man auf diffuse Weise ergriffen.

It is a work for those already/ decommissioned and left to rot/ there's no one else making records like this/ it is better, it sounds real/ open your heart, and let it take you into the night/ it is unlikely that you will experience anything else quite like this for the rest of the year/ [water dripping and rain pouring... and something that could be knives or coins or something else metallic rubbing against each other].

Music Re-View 11.1 (Remix)

All Images: October 2021

I want to focus on this review because there are some points in his track record where girls and the weatherwoman know doing this, anditworksprettymuchliketimetochasemusicandexplorejustabouteverything[No Results Found], as long as it's just a sophisticated step-to-step trying to come up with very familiar processing sounds.  The loud speaker/ almost every track in this blip is a great mix of drowning sounds if you want to listen to a song that disappears with a religious experience during the next song where the other sounds are completely erased when the other one is about to gradually make noise like of course, I don't mean it's '90s because the music is really different in the '90s where we look at the cover except when you look at the cover of the song can you really tell them they will continue to be strong andiron industry as an abstract artwork that believes in the history of MMA Cry even though it can be disappointing in graphics and can be restored as colon Microsoft colons or something/ HowDHLMusicRachelFiatLow202010-kisjustmyopinion[It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search].

I feel that in terms of music, what they do is often slowed down by Albion, buthereallyseesthat90[No Results Found]%ofthetime[Did you mean: of the time], and I think that's the kind of value I like. Do they have a taste for music that really goes into everything, as long as it's OK to be very profitable and you're willing to be brave and willing to experiment and they said take the next step to see what they can do with their voices It's a bit like listening to New Age gospel back and forth between these The summaries as well as chanting these rhythms in a wonderful voice line from Helen and I over and over / Surely beautiful music does not create a way to compose music like I don't know but as I said it's the most important without mentioning this exciting experience because it's the best part about the other itch, i t ' s u n u s u a l a n d s l o w a n d i t ' s h e a v y . Another more melodic song like a brighter and happier life, they do a great job.

It will make your butt a good and good exercise where you can nervously show off your weird techniques with a double negative dragon that can actually be like real singing and tunes where love songs are actually like real songs that you can really sing to believe in or just don't speak like that. Coincidentally, you're into crazy abstract noises that care to talk about it like some orchestra loves the entire Bible. Like noise and Helen's clever distortion and meteors on the edge of the scale before I decide to do what's really comfortable but negative. A move to grow there in the development revolution and I think it's because of my clothes so who's always going to get it so always trying to figure out how to create more treatment last weekend so I'll throw in the paint again or if I know it's the industrial intent because there's a lot I want to say I have two tracks on this record whose artificial densities cannot be animals of a very good standard.

I'm just coming. It's so beautiful because you just realized God is real, and I don't know I came in the morning, so maybe ****** how many days I'll wake up and realize I'm in the morning because I'm the melody and the low position in my chair it was in my mind so beautiful. Hecameupwithaweirdformulalikemelodyoutloudlikeachorus[Make sure all words are spelled correctly] / I think maybe they do it with a bit of continuity and I think it would have been better to leave the listener busy with constructive criticism because I think you practice what's going on there but other than that / It more or less works like time to chase music and exploration of just about anything, as long as the evolutionary stage of reading is just trying to blend in with gentle processing sounds for the speaker to hear, I really like the way they like it.

Music Re-View 11

All Images: October 2021

(Video Transcript)

I want to focus on in this review because there's some points on this record where you know girls and Mrs weather doing and it's working pretty much like the time chasing music and really digging to just about everything as long as it's call step in evolution going to try to just complex with beautiful arrangement sounds of the speaker reputation/ pretty much every track on this LP is a horse beautiful otherworldly blend of noise drown if you want to listen to the song disappearing religious experience through the next in which other voices are absolutely obliterated as the next gets progressively noisia/ and it's just like of course I'm not going to realise it's the same bed from the 90s because the music is literally so radically different their 90s and early like he population let's go take a look at the cover just looking at the song cover you can already f****** tell they're going to continue with the Noisy androni in industrial and screams like super abstract piece of art that belongs in the Museum of Modern Art history to come cry at even though it could be disappointing graphic that is custom rebuilt into like Microsoft paint or something/ How to DHL music raquel Fiat low 20220 10-k personally just my personal opinion.

I feel like with the musical matter what they're doing it's going to be down tempo in for most part creepshow Albion but it really is to see them 90% of the time and I think that's the payoff with a being like this I love do they have a question taste in music that really dig into just about everything as long as it's good at being like this pays off and dividends I feel like you are they are willing to be brave and willing to experiment and said take that  next step to see what they can do with their sound/ it is kind of like listening to new age gospel done right from here it's back and forth between these abstract and also moving those rhythms with wonderful vocal interplay from Helen and me again and again and again/ which is just absolutely f****** beautiful music it doesn't make any how do you make music like I don't know but it like I said the most important regardless of the the experimentation is as impressive as it is the best part is itchy another is phenomenal and slow and heavy and it to another song that's like a little bit more melodic in a little bit like brighter and happier life they do a great job.

It's gonna f*** your ass real good and the best low demonstrated irritable of your f****** kind of weird techniques with double negative dragon actually be able to have like real singing and melodies on top of it songs that like are actually like real songs that you can actually sing along to believe it or not just talking like a little bit of like here is a melody that happens to be on top of a f****** crazy abstract noise you mind talking about like how many orchestrate like an entire f****** gospel.of like vocal harmonies I just come in formula of like this noisy beautiful the album like doing all sorts of things I mean/ I do wish it had more to offer as far as a finish to feels almost like noise and distortion wise Helen and meteor bordering I'm going volume before you decide to in a really comfy but the potential negative I think it's gorgeous it's moving it's mine/  the book of Aldi aspect is pretty much on point so what can we do to expand a sound to grow and is definitely a cool step in in in the growth in there in the Revolution in development and I think what makes it a my clothes so who was that they're always going to continue to reach for what they're always going to try to you know create the most just complex but beautiful arrangement of sounds of the past weekend so I really whether it's emptying inlay back or whether you know it's intention industrial cos there's a lot of I would say have two tracks on this record really cannot have this industrial intensity to them very animal level is very well I love it.

I just come in this is just like what is so beautiful cuz you're f****** just realised god is real I don't know I guess I got in the morning maybe maybe maybe its f****** few days I'm going to wake up and realise I morning because the f****** and low put the seat of my brain whatever it is it's absolutely beautiful invented this new sort of weird formula like this noisy beautiful melodic like a heavenly choir/ I think they probably do it just a little bit better continuity I think it would have done a better job of keeping the listener engage in constructive criticism coming for my opinion you train a what was going on there but other than that/ for a level really love the way that I can wait and then all night very big language into I love it alongside this is where the/ vocal passage that sounds like a gannet so deeply influenced by folk music and yeah and change in one or more from it in another if this risk when on for any longer and pretty sure my ears with bleed/ but the point is it's very rare fantastic album holy shoes for watching let me know if you're thinking accountants holy shoes I love you loads maybe I'll check out the moment thing into it will see Wi-Fi now I'll see you in Utah/ do strong a on this one transition have you given the album listen did you need it but would you read it nation tonight you know/ so you can have an up please on this listing is reckon you find this review helpful please like this video and subscribe to the Channel and we will see you next time.