Recording review - Wendy Atkinson, The Last Fret (2015)

Welcome to the gallery of memory

^3.25/5.0

The Last Fret is not so much an album as it is a sonic art installation dedicated to memory. That makes it more concerned with evoking particular moods than trying to fit into conventional songwriting structures. Wendy Atkinson's relatively short sketches achieve her targeted effect by exploring feelings of introspection, loss, and hope. She cloaks her bass with pensive ambient washes, electronic textures, and field recordings, occasionally expanding the tracks with other instruments or spoken word segments.

Our first stop in this gallery walk is "What Came Before", which creates the sense of moving through a foggy landscape of memory. Swells of electronic tone loom, but melt back into the featureless cotton before their details can register. Atkinson summons a distance between the events she's teasing apart and her need to find understanding and closure. The elegiac mood is reminiscent of Panderecki.

A couple of tracks later, another piece catches my deeper attention. "In the Off Season" pensively sways between two chords. While the title implies the idea of marking time, it feels more like two focal points of an old debate, where repetition has worn the exchange into an endless ellipse: neither side can ever win or even stand alone without the context of its negation. This is a fitting setup for "Hebron Birds", which draws on Atkinson's experience in that city. Her muddy, noisy recording of a chance encounter with a group of laughing girls in a mosque forms the internal recollection behind her spoken word piece that contrasts the "joyfulness, trust, and curiosity" of these girls with the troubled city they live in. It's a political statement but still emphatically personal. The simple instrumental accompaniment shades the story but stays to the background.

Two of the tracks disrupt the ambiance of the showing by falling outside the arc of the album. Her deconstruction of Chain and the Gang's "What is a Dollar" fits sonically but the anti-capitalist lyrics don't really connect thematically. By contrast, the wistful pop song structure of "Ukulele Shock" is shocking itself amidst the more expressive experimentation of the other tracks. Atkinson matter-of-factly relates a story from her youth, which ties the tune back to the central theme, but the punch line ending injects a touch of deadpan humor that also feels odd in this setting. Either of these songs might have best been saved for another setting, but fortunately they don't do any lasting damage to the coherent motif of The Last Fret.

Atkinson brings a rich range of textures and techniques to her work. The brevity of pieces often leave you wanting more, or perhaps a more detailed evolution, but her impressionistic, "less is more" approach leaves room for interpretation on subsequent visits. Her songs never overstay their welcome in part because she doesn't place too much weight on delicate structure of her material, The Last Fret is a thoughtful collection worthy of a relaxed afternoon or evening visit..

Recording review - Silencio, The Politics of Lonely (2013)

Soft focused and saturated, an enchanting taste of memory

There is a moment of clarity when will and intent drop away, a moment that exists outside of time. Buddhists call it satori. On The Politics of Lonely, Julien Demoulin and Silencio circle that point, trying to intuit its shape. But they recognize that the surest way to approach it is to let go of the search and drift idly, letting the currents carry them. Dreamy and relaxed, the album is a trance journey that skirts the edges of space music, New Age and experimental post-rock. This new album is more rhythmically engaged than the band’s last release, When I’m Gone (2012), but still aims for a hypnogogic state on the borderlands between sleep and consciousness.

The pieces are evocative, often sounding like they’d pair well with short videos—“The City” has a shimmery underwater feel that could serve as the soundtrack for an old film loop. It’s easy to imagine the soft focus and saturated colors of home-shot Super 8. All the action onscreen would be silent and the music would rest upon it with the distance and detachment of memory. Maybe this is the loneliness indicated by the album title, but, if so, it’s a thoughtful remove. The reminiscence is split by staccato piano stutters that suggest a set of hidden meanings that never quite coherently connect. The second time through, the song is caught in an eddy of navel-gazing. The languorous flow is distracted by the glistening ripples, by worlds of possibilities.

The songs on The Politics of Lonely are anchored by Demoulin’s guitar and Bernold Delgoda on percussion, along with Nicolas Lecocq on keys. The guitar and piano take turns leading, while Delgoda’s drag beat rhythms ensure that any progress is slow and measured. Synthesizers and electronic treatments flesh out the pieces, adding an ambient vibe that meshes with the reverberating melodies. Several of the tracks also feature Lénina Epstein on bass, most notably “Old You” and “Bridges”. This latter tune follows in Pink Floyd’s footsteps, borrowing a little from both Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. A looped guitar figure slowly sways from one chord to another while Epstein’s bass swoops between the two root notes and the drums groove along lazily. The piece seems content to wander from pole to pole, but then it comes to a halt as if blocked. The guitar probes with single notes, as if searching for a way around. The drums stumble along as the other instruments make their tentative forays. The rising swell of synths signal a change in perspective and a crystalline path forward is revealed. It’s not clear where it will lead and the moment freezes on the brink of a decision.

The album is enchanting as it explores world after world, traveling to the hazy heart of Limbo or mapping the drifting boundaries of unknown dream dimensions. Each track is a meditation, where a different mantra reigns. The universal truths they reveal are found in the rolling waves of synthesizers and guitars cloaked in echoes. On repeated listening, Delgoda’s percussion stands out as the distinguishing element. His nuanced playing magnifies the differences in mood and keeps Silencio from slipping into any single genre. His structure pulls the album away from the gravity well of space music and pushes it in jazzy and progressive directions

How close do they come to enlightenment? As close as the heat shimmer wash of a desert sky or as far out as taking mushrooms and watching dust motes dance in the sunlight.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Gold Panda, Half of Where You Live (2013)

Meditative travelogue wrapped in a bubble

Gold Panda’s Half Of Where You Live is a trance-inducing travelogue. This is his second full album after the well-received Lucky Shiner. He continues to mine the same Southeast Asian influences from his earlier work, but this time he extends them with the sonic imprints from other corners of his far-ranging touring experiences, including North and South America. Each track finds its own meditative flavor and sense of time or place. Synthesizer washes and jittery techno beats lay the foundation, but the album is spiced up with a wide variety of instruments from delicate chimes to marimba, as well as vocal and musical sampling. Unlike his remix projects over the last couple of years, this album works best when taken as a whole. A few songs muster enough personality to stand alone, like “Flinton” and “An English House”, but the whirlwind world tour feel of the collection makes a stronger statement than any single track.

“Flinton” rolls by with a lazy, glitchy R&B progression peppered with low-fi record pops. A hazy memory of a disco-soul summer night, maybe a reminiscence of a sweet first meeting on the dance floor, the song’s laid back tone soothes and savors the mood. Eventually, the edges unravel as the reverie slips away and the present reasserts itself. There’s similar sense of lassitude in “An English House”. The sonic collage intro offers the sole sense of urgency -- a windy night and a stranger comes seeking entry. After that, the song’s stutter-beat electro-pop offers a charming, off-kilter stroll towards some unnamed goal. Whispery swells and light chiming sounds blur the corners of the song, creating an ASMR effect. The fluting solo line and warm vocal fragment, “In this house…”, are calming even if the beat becomes a tad insistent.

While Gold Panda has infused these songs with interesting details, there’s a definite sense of distance between the music and its inspiration. It resonates with the idea of world travel, but from an observer’s perspective. On “Brazil”, the steady syncopation picks up a dripping rainforest rhythm. The pulsing electronic ornamentation changes constantly, like browsing a rich catalog of exotic animals and insects, but it’s not so much a direct experience of South America as it is a view from an insulated window. Elsewhere, “My Father In Hong Kong 1961” uses bells to evoke an Asian feel, but Gold Panda is channeling Mike Oldfield more than Chinese roots. The effect is hypnotic, but disengaged.

That disconnection makes it easy to dismiss Half Of Where You Live as musical wallpaper and it would serve that purpose well enough, whether as an exercise soundtrack or to kill distractions at the office. But Gold Panda’s music is actually designed for meditation, where his evocative palette can clarify thoughts and provide an intriguing perspective. His Zen approach isn’t concerned about the destination of a given piece; it focuses on the greater journey of the whole album. For a listener with receptive ears and mind, it can be the perfect recording to sink into. If that’s not you right now, you can still play it as light background music.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Colin Edwin | Jon Durant, Burnt Belief (2012)

 A winding trip through space and mind

Colin Edwin is most well-known for his moody bass work with the progressive Porcupine Tree, but his side projects have tackled contexts from ambient to metal. On Burnt Belief, he partners with guitarist Jon Durant to explore a mix of ethereal space rock and multicultural new age instrumentals. Edwin's expressive playing forms the foundation, but Durant's sense of texture colors each song, creating unique settings.

The early tracks on the album suggest Ozric Tentacles, with sinuous bass, keyboard fills, and engaging syncopation. "Altitude" fades in with a pulsating, liquid ripple. Once underway, fluting synths and a steady beat create a sense of movement. The song hints at the quiet opening of Porcupine Tree's "Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here", but with a more fluid bass line. The guitar soars over the top periodically before dropping back to let the song catch its breath. As the title suggests, the piece clambers ever higher, but with the untethered finish, the song overshoots the top and drifts free to unknown destinations.

From here, Burnt Belief slides into the percussion-driven "Impossible Senses". Hints of tabla and polyrhythm give the song a worldbeat flair. Once again, the smooth guitar meshes with Edwin's slinky bass, but this time it takes on a greater sense of purpose. The repetition of the melodic theme becomes a mantra. Each return reworks the idea a little further, like an expanding mosaic that eventually reveals a larger pattern.

From these spacy beginnings, the album moves into new age realms, with ambient shimmers and fog. The epic showpiece track "Uncoiled" starts with muted swells. Low bells and taps flicker, like a dark house settling around you at midnight. Lightly jarring drips of piano ripple in the hazy darkness, creating a mix of expectancy and disquiet. Wandering the halls, a previously unnoticed doorway comes into focus. Slowly opening, a glowing desert is revealed, complete with Native American flute and soft percussion. Stepping into this new world, sparse elements add to the unreal sensation: metallic harping, echoing piano, and restrained bass. The song eventually coalesces into a hypnotic procession of guitar and bass that continues to support the out-of-body vibe.

Most of the music on Burnt Belief is stellar. Durant and Edwin are natural collaborators. Each voice stands strong without eclipsing the other. There are, however, two weaknesses with the project: one conceptual and the other musical. The duo presents the album as a contrast between faith and reason, inspired in part by Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails, an account of a doomsday UFO cult in the 1950s. But the songs don't reflect that theme and it proves distracting. Ironically, the one track that might draw on that idea suffers from its sense of discontinuity. "The Weight of Gravity" lacks the coherence of the other songs as it mashes up too many unrelated moods. Its slow, meditative start creates a sweat lodge atmosphere. This arbitrarily transforms into a futuristic, electro-psych groove with a sense of purpose which clashes with the opening relaxation. The further drift into an organic fusion jam is less jarring, but lacks any clear sense of flow. While the intention might have been to show the conflict between religion and science, the pair miss their mark.

Despite that, Burnt Belief delivers enough beauty that its flaws can be overlooked. The thoughtful bass line and delicately interleaved guitar and piano on the closing track, "Arcing Towards Morning", cleanses the palate and lets the album end in moment of clarity.

(This review originally appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Brian Eno, Lux (2012)

Eno continues his ambient explorations, heading for the light

Brian Eno never fully settled in during his professional start with Roxy Music. While his brief tenure with the band proved to be the mainstream interlude of his career as a musician, it was his artistic vision that made him remarkably influential on popular music. Although his initial solo work focused on synthesizer-based pop, his aesthetic sensibility led him to develop studio skills and a unique sonic touch that eventually had him producing a number of artists including David Bowie, the Talking Heads, and U2. In parallel, he became enamored with aleatoric or indeterminate music, expanding on the creative application of random chance in composition and performance. By 1975’s Discreet Music, Eno’s flirtation with what he would call ambient music was fully underway.

Eno effectively introduced this experimental music to popular audiences because he bridged the two worlds. Fans who knew him through Roxy Music and his first couple of solo albums followed him to echo-driven explorations with Robert Fripp and several other art music projects. The step into stranger realms was not far off the path of Eno’s creative arc. The long quavers and echo-cushioned notes of the ambient genre embrace the idea of music that can be appreciated from intellectual and meditative perspectives as well as background sound. Listeners can all but ignore it, letting it flavor their sub-conscious mood. But given attention and focus, ambient music engages the pattern matching parts of our brains. The implied structures are elusive, but small sections suggest their own directions.

Which brings us to Eno's latest ambient offering, Lux. Originally intended to enhance an installation at the Great Gallery of the Palace of Venaria in Turin, Italy, the album is split into four 18-plus minute tracks. Each section has its own flavor, but the sense of spaciousness and possibility recall Ambient 1: Music For Airports (1978). Similarly, it’s not so far from Austin Wintory’s sound design for the PS3 game flOw. A spacy openness is conveyed with slowly shifting foundation tones. Additional synth lines drop in and melt down into the shimmering ground. Individual piano keys drip into the mix, where they echo and linger.

Listening to “Lux 1” is like drifting in a float tank. The relaxing wash of sound is deeply meditative. The tonal parade is steady, but feels organically spaced and creates a hopeful sense that matures through the evolution of the track. Later, Eno creates a sense of depth by varying the relative volumes of successive note groups, pushing some towards the background while others step forward. As the foundation fades lower in pitch, the track turns more pensive. Near the end, some deeper string tones give the music a darker, more ominous feel.

“Lux 2” continues the push into tension and unease, moving away from the harmony that opened Lux and into chromatic discord. The track contrasts dark low notes with sharper timbre in the foreground. Guitar resonates, almost to the edge of feedback, then cuts out. Where “Lux 1” presents music that exists on its own plane, “Lux 2” sounds more overtly created, largely because Eno uses more acoustic instruments to build his textures.

The uneasiness persists into “Lux 3”, but transitions into curiosity. The layers of sound are denser as sequences overlap and slip past without quite interlocking. As the track becomes more thoughtful, there’s a sense of foreboding implied by a recurrent bass note theme. Despite a brief resolution into a more harmonious mood, the general sense of intrigue mixed with worry remains. “Lux 4” offers a taste of thoughtful evaluation, then resolves into a calm acceptance. The pace of incoming musical packages seems to slow back to the initial tempo and Eno’s conceptual flow achieves completion without ever overtly clarifying anything.

The key to ambient music and its interpretation is to understand the plasticity of the components. Shuffle the sections of Lux into a different order and the meaning would shift accordingly. This order follows a subtle path, but still delivers a coherent flow centered around the muted climax of tension during “Lux 2”. The bar for judging this genre is fairly low, in part because it’s just as easy to dismiss the music as trivial background noise as it is to respect narrative it cam evoke. Musical rating is always subjective, but even more so in this case. Interpreting this kind of music is challenging; each listener brings their own associations. For me, it paired well with a crisp fall afternoon, providing relaxation and meditative focus. Eno’s continuing exploration of ambient terrain remains interesting and engaging.