This is cool – a violin playing robot, developed by Toyota. Not quite in the same class as Stefan Grappelli, admittedly.
Monthly Archives: December 2007
Album: RANDOM NUMBER – Modern Ambivalence (Moamoo 2007)
Since leaving Leeds avant-popsters Hood six years ago, Matt Robson has issued four albums under his Random Number alias, each on a different label. His latest, Modern Ambivalence, comes courtesy of Tokyo-based Moamoo.
Robson’s music combines gltchy electronica with a melodic pop sheen, similar to Chris Clark’s or Squarepusher’s gentler sides. Like 2006’s Golden Acre Sleeps, three tunes feature the voice of Katie Lou Moore. Rather than being straight vocal tracks, however, her voice is sampled and processed to give a fairly alien effect. This is particular effective on “Sleep” where she sounds like a ghostly echo trapped in a malfunctioning CD player. “Silver Shadow Follows You” has a similar feel to Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” in the way that the beats stutter to give a kind of fractured funk.
Other highlights include the epic title track, which sounds like ambient music stuck in a food blender and haphazardly glued together, like Kid606 attempting a homage to mid-nineties Warp, and the brilliantly named “Potternewton Haiku Society”. Best of all is the skittish, but extremely pretty closer “From Carried To Keen” which ends in a rare burst of fuzzed guitar. But there isn’t a weak tune on the album.
It’s a pity that Modern Ambivalence sneaked out in December when most people seemed to be busy looking back on the year rather than paying any attention to new stuff. It’s an intelligent and accomplished album which reveals new things with each listen.
Tracks
1 Push (5:39)
2 Sion Everywhere (4:18)
3 Puddles Filled With Pine Needles (1:23)
4 Line Copse Long (5:24)
5 Silver Shadow Follows You (3:21)
6 Modern Ambivalence (7:20)
7 Double Slow Thinking (5:47)
8 Black Hills (1:51)
9 Potternewton Haiku Society (4:15)
10 From Carried To Keen (6:35)
Websites
http://www.danbooth.co.uk/discontents/
http://www.artuniongroup.co.jp/moamoo/
Albums of the year: Top 3
Before the trumpets sound and the drums roll, here are a few things that could have made the top thirty, but didn’t owing to the fact that I haven’t yet heard them! But all are high on my “to hear” list in 2008:
ARVE HENRIKSEN: Strjon; MISTICAL: The Eleventh Hour; WILLIAM BASINSKI: Short Wave Music; ALVA NOTO: Xerrox Volume 1; BJ NILSEN: The Short Night; ALEKSI PERALA: Project V; LUKE VIBERT: Chicago, Redruth, Detroit; BUGGE WESSELTOFT: Im. And those are just some that I know about.
Compilations / Reissues: The continuing Motown series gets better and better. Volume 9 is out soon covering 1969 over six discs. Best reissue for me was Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Englaborn – it would have made my top ten with ease if I’d deemed it eligible.
OK. On to my top trio. They were easy to pick, but not so easy to order – particularly the top two.
Ignore the last paragraph of my review. I got a little overexcited and carried away. That said, Cosmos is a seriously good suite of music. The two title tracks are particularly remarkable – long drawn out drones constructed out of snippets of orchestral samples, like particles of dead sound coalescing around a new core, and reawakening. Or something like that.
In a true pessimist’s fashion I was prepared to be disappointed by this. Burial’s debut album was so remarkable, that I couldn’t see how it could be matched. Even the early reviews attesting to its greatness failed to sway me – how many times have people, who were late to a debut album, heaped praise on its ropey successor, simply because they weren’t there for the first? Then a couple of years later, everyone’s embarassed about it, and all pretend that they always thought it was rubbish. I call it Arcade Fire syndrome (Neon Bible really is pants – overblown, self-important pants at that).
I digress. I heard “Ghost Hardware” before the rest of the album. I was convinced then, and I’m convinced now. Untrue not only matches the first album, it betters it. And it does so by taking the music into a completely new direction, whilst deepening the mood of dislocation, and confused melancholy. If your instinctive reaction is to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction at the first whiff of hype, then you’re like me. But sometimes what seems like hype is just collective enthusiasm. Rarely, but it’s definitely the case with Burial.
1. STARS OF THE LID: And The Refinement Of Their Decline
On the face of it, this is two hours of drones over two CDs (three LPs), occasionally enlivened by snippets of melody from a lone piano or clarinet. The pace is not so much glacial as geological. This isn’t music in a hurry. Stars Of The Lid share a kind of narcotic quality with Burial. With the latter, it is a twitchy, fugged mind, tired but not sleepy kind of state. With Stars Of The Lid, all is calm, and the mind drifts into a warm coccoon of semi-consciousness. Every now and then, there is a heartbreaking melody on piano, cello, clarinet, that breaks through the comfort like glimpses of past regrets. This isn’t mellow, chill-out music. There is a deep sadness about it that can be emotionally exhausting, but also cathartic. It’s also very, very beautiful.
Albums of the year: #4
Rune Grammofon would be my label of the year. It’s an extraordinary imprint that combines design elegance and, to a degree, uniformity with a musical breadth that would be dismissed as dilettantism if it wasn’t so consistent in quality.
Shining are pretty much the consumate Rune Grammofon group, if such a thing could possibly exist. Take the epic, menacing prog of Van Der Graaf Generator, the rock-jazz of Jaga Jazzist, the riffing metal of Metallica and the improv trailblazing of Supersilent and you might come up with something that resembles Grindstone. But you’d probably come up with an unlistenable mess. Shining gad about with atonal free jazz, burbling electrics and operatics rubbing shoulders with manic riffing, and quiet melancholy. But it all makes perfect sense when melded together. Listening to Grindstone is like being on a big dipper in the dark. You have no idea where you’re headed, but each twist, turn and sudden plummet is a thrill, and at the end you can’t wait to do it all over again!
Albums of the year: #5
The Genovese quartet followed the superb Flares with an equally strong collection that blends instrumental rock and breezy electronica into an emotional, cinematic soup.
Below is a video for “Putin vs Valery” directed by Sieva Diamantakos.
Albums of the year: #6
DO MAKE SAY THINK: You, You’re A History In Rust
There’s no full review to link back to for this one. I don’t think I’d started the blog when this appeared early in the year, and simply never got round to writing one. Do Make Say Think have come a long way since they first appeared, tagged as a spikier, less-epic Godspeed You Black Emperor. This was the group’s fifth album, and continued a process of evolution that has seen Do Make Say Think incorporate horns and vocals into their increasingly ambitious music. File under neo-classical ambient post-punk folk music. Whaddya mean there’s no section for that?
Below is a lovely rendition of “A Tender History In Rust” filmed on a warm summer’s day. (Remember them?)
