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Music reviews
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Admittedly, I'm not fluent in
my knowledge of this band, although I have run across them a
few times. What I have discovered in researching the band,
however, is that band leader, Liam Howlett, has attempted to
trim down and possibly change some of their directions during
the seven year timespan between albums. No doubt this will
disappoint some older fans, but for me, that is a process all
musicians need to do from time to time. The CD opens with a pumping tune called, Spitfire, which I find one of the more memorable songs. Musically, it's a Mid-Eastern influenced raver with both soft melodic vocals and kicking vocals blended in an effective manner. Mixtures of punk, breakbeat, rock, hip hop, and dance electronica permeate this recording. In addition there's a version of the chorus of the late sixties song, Beautiful Balloon, mixed into the chaos of Hotride which is highly entertaining. This album is a nice contrast
to my normal instrumental electronica.
I last heard this trio, Steve
Roach, Byron Metcalf, and Mark Seelig, on Metcalf / Seelig's
Wachuma's Wave, a tribal ambient extravaganza. I pretty
much expected more of the same here, but was once again
surprised by the versatility of these musicians. Admittedly,
this recording could easily fit in the tribal ambient
category, yet it leans much further into the introspective
soundscape regions than some of their other works.
In fact, this CD has a strong Eastern / Mid-Eastern sound quality to it. Roach's website relates it to Sufi trance dances and it certainly would be effective to use for meditation. The cover looks like mandala artwork and Seelig's bansuri (an Indian flute) floats in and out pushing us further eastward in our journey. The music is divided into eight sections which are numbered rather than named and they flow into each other. In the opening track a tamboura adds a lovely tonal quality to the piece. The tamboura, played by guest musician, Stefin Gordon, is most often heard adding that string drone behind sitar's and such in traditional Indian musics. Metcalf's beats give the music structure without rushing us as the piece evolves and flows along. The back cover claims that the music is "grounded in a reverence for the slowing of time" and builds yet never hurries to get where it's going. This disc shows once again that
the technological and the shamanic aren't as far apart from
each other as it might seem.
Sergeant Sawtooth is the working name of artist Rob Robinson, and this is the first recording of his that I have heard. Although it may not be politically correct these days, the recording, as the title implies is a musical interpretation of psychoactive substances. The Negative3 organization seems to be a performance / multimedia group, so I imagine that seeing this music live would be a, well, a trip. The mind alterant approach is
not new among musicians, with various "acid" rock songs in the
sixties, Verdeaux's song Messe Caline, and Coil's
ambient soundscape Time Machines (a concept recording
based on psilocybin and other psychedelics) and so on.
However, everyone's mental impressions of these experiences
differ, and this is no exception to that rule. The track DXM has a spine tingling melody line which would be excellent as a horror movie theme. The line is in an eerie key making the tune rather haunting. As variance, other tracks like Soma have a contemporary dance beats moving them along. The cover is an interesting
blend of medieval metaphysic graphics (with Latin
inscriptions, angelic images, and astrological / astronomical
concepts) overlaid with molecular structures (presumably of
the drugs being musically interpreted). This recording worked
well as my introduction to the band, and I look forward to
hearing more from them.
Alexei Borisov is an artist who obviously doesn't follow the normally beaten path. In fact, it's rather difficult to describe the path that Borisov follows with this recording. However you define it, it certainly is pushing the envelope. It took me several listenings
to even begin to get a grasp of this recording. The CD is
experimental to say the least, with odd electrical tones,
gathered noises, and processed voices mixed into the soup.
There were times that I wondered if my player was
malfunctioning or if the disc was damaged! These aren't
flowing soundscapes and melody is not a word I would use with
most of the tracks, although, once in a while there are
segments of what sounds like more "mainstream" songs. Truthfully, this is not a
recording that is likely to get a lot of play here, but I have
to respect someone willing to make me ponder where music's
boundaries really lie.
Electronic floating soundscapes / ambient
music. The first track, I saw a thousand swallows, are
rather generic ambient shaped pads and atmospheric floating
synths, but the second track Machine Ex Deus introduces
us to more interesting sounds. Still ambient and synthetic,
but Then, a series of well crafted tracks with more character and adventure. Holes within holes has some powerful string-like synth chords, but takes off only at the very end. Too little and maybe too late, but acceptable. I swallowed a thousandand saws has some interesting deep bass sounds that makes the track dark and eerie, but nothing that is really scary, like some of Chris & Cosey's Library of Sound work. Still interesting to listen to. The mighty fallen rust in the sun continues in the eerie area, where gothic ambience is penetrated by a razor guitar. The track builds up excellent imagery and atmosphere, and is easily the best track on the album. The last song, Best of Times, leaves strict ambient territory as a rythmical theme in the form of a kettledrum arrangement is used to punctuate the electronic string chords. A rather basic arrangement which I guess has a certain fitting atmosphere and falling into the dark tradition of some tracks. But again, nothing too innovative. (A "hidden" track at the end of the album offers a beautiful piano theme played with subtle synth backgrounds. It lasts for only 59 seconds but shows a melodic talent that is otherwise not on display during any of the regular tracks.) This album could have used some more
exciting sound design and a couple of kicks in the butt to get
out of the off-the-shelf formula for ambient music. Perhaps
tighter supervision or additional production by a
collaborator. There is talent here, but it does not emerge to
the surface all the time.
Callisto is David Wright and
Dave Massey, two well-known figures in the UK EM community.
Therefore it is not a surprise that Callisto's Signal to
the Stars offers classic space-age melodic EM in the best
Jarre / Vangelis vein, with a bit of Berlin School thrown in
for good measure. The album opens with Sycorax, a
catchy two-part tune of around 13 minutes that build up from
floating space chords and soft sequencer patterns to a very
powerful and rich synthesizer We are then given the three-part Iosphere, which is a Vangelis pastiche gone over the edge. The three parts starts with a slow, soft track with the melody playing supported by mellow rythms. The second part is a development of the first track, but with a little heavier beats and sounds, and then this segment is rounded of by the third track with even heavier and a fuller sound. The sound is still crisp and truly electronic, but the arrangements and the muzak-ish treatment is too syrup-ish for me. There's simply too much of the cute and fluffy stuff, and no oomph or guilty pleasures in sight. This is thankfully remedied by the next song, Elara, another slow piece which is more spacey than it's almost pop-like predecessor. Beautiful space chords with an electronic flute performing an emotional melody, and discreet sequencers providing the rhythm. Another excellent track with a smaller, but still perfect production. The album's fourth title, another three-track title called Setisphere, starts promising with it's first part's introduction, but again the muzak monster strikes again and the track falls down in Yanni land rather than in Klaus Schulze territory, which is one of the artists mentioned in the booklet as having given inspiration. I think the rhythm structure is the problem here. It's a bit plain and poppy. Setisphere part 2 (which is a development of part 1) suffers from the same problem, but is slightly better because the sounds become a bit more edgy and sharp. Part 3 adds more oomph and a rock-guitar inspired synth solo, but lacks a bit of structure, or maybe it's the solo that is kinda improvised and noisy. The final title is Naiad, also divided in three parts. The first part is a space-chord introduction with ambient pads and space sounds floating around, building up to an excellent second part where a combination of cool (albeit quite traditinal) rhythms, sequencers and themes in a semi-uptempo mix thrives together in classic EM fashion. The whole album is then rounded off by a soft ambient piece, which basically offers a synth background with the theme played on a piano (or a synth that sounds like a piano, I suspect). A quiet and nice track, but I miss some small and clever sound effects to support the allround synthetic feel of the rest of album. Now, the finale has been yannified. The good tracks on Signal to
the stars show a lot of talent and passion for this kind
of music, but the weaker tracks are somewhat boring and seem
more calculated than the upbeat ones. I look forward to the
next album and know that Callisto will be a name to remember. |
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the combination of unusual and contrasting sounds are more
adventurous and daring. Sadly it is a bit short, as I would
want more along these lines. Then we get a couple of weaker
tracks, made up of soft synth washes, somewhat melodic and
sweet, but without enough surprises or innovating sound design
to keep me interested. 
symphony. One of the best classic EM tracks of 2004 in my
ears! The production is clean and fresh, technically perfect,
with a very electronic sound (no guitars or flutes or "exotic
additions") and nifty little details. A fantastic opener which
got my expectations way up.