20 tracks from 20 artists. Bill Nelson I know. Jimmy Behan, Merlot, Murmansk, Eddie Rocket (aka Eddie O'Neill?) and the rest, I don’t.
So all I have is my ears.
Electronica, being so direct - energy straight from current to the ear - should not have a personality. But like the ink blots of the Rorschach Test, its perfect abstractions defy our ability to not create form, structure, purpose, character. As such electronic music is the perfect territory for the genius and the charlatan. Have these tracks come from years of sonic experiment, discourse and refinement, or are they loopy bits of mood massage that anyone with Pro Tools or Cubase could knock out in an afternoon? And does it matter?
It’s the sheer number of unknowns that both fascinate and repel the reviewer.
So what if I was just a listener? Someone with a broad musical appreciation who likes to mix some classical music with quality pop, world, folk and post-rock experimentation? Your middle of the road Mojo kind of person. HMV's 50 quid man, maybe. Or some mythic singleton who buys a CD with a bunch of flowers to lighten up the urban apartment.
First off, the 20 tracks have a well balanced feel. All the tracks have warm tone colours and light dance pulses that tease out relaxed, sociably gentle feelings of affection, togetherness and pleasant arousal. There are no jagged wave shapes, no percussive explosions or washes of white noise. No irregular tempos. Even FORMIKA v MJK's hip hop tinged "Bloodrush" keeps itself out of yer face in a polite kind of way.
Second off, it isn’t just mood music. There are tunes to play with and textures to get wrapped up in. Maybe in a Philip Glass minimalist kind of way – but not quite as anodyne and shapeless as that might imply. By giving each artist standard pop song lengths to work with, there are starts, stops and middle bits. A tune like "PBLX" by EBAUCHE for example has a quite ambitions dynamic range and ends on a pretty grand scale. "My Country Blues" that follows it has SCHTAT sampling chords evocative of Goretski's 3rd Symphony. There are agreeable bits of vocoder stuff (surely no longer possible?) in JIMMY BEHAN's "A Normal Situation" and in HOLFSET'S "Noodles Now" some miniature liquid drops and scratchy beats with reassuring bass lines punctuate the mellowness. Tempos pick up here and there, then slow it done there and here. Plenty of listenable moments, then.
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But third off, £50 quid bloke/mythic singleton will buy it to gentle up the sonic karma at home, and associates of each represented artist will use it to get to know some more like-minded creators. One thing they will discover is that Bill Nelson doesn’t play the guitar on his track (EDDIE O'NEILL does). That final track "The Blazing Memory of Innuendo" is some sampled speech and a well-controlled modulation of guitar and keyboard-like sounds using a repeated eight note phrase with one sliding note. I'm guessing that it’s a good electronica album for people who are a bit wary of electronica. You can sample before you buy on Dublin-based Elusive Recording's website at www.elusiverecordings.com
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