This is an ambitions compilation CD. Matthew Sweeney from Leeds and Tom Sharples from London present eighteen new artists who bring together electronic and organic music. It's a very wide brief, and the geographical spread is expansive too. Canada, Norway, the US, Scotland and England are represented.
18 tracks at an hour and fifteen minutes is very good value. It’s also a marathon of listening. With each contribution coming from a separate place (often the artist's bedroom) the hope that brevity, a theme or a shared aesthetic would emerge was probably asking too much. Several of the tracks could have benefited from being cut back by a couple of minutes. Five of the tracks exceed five minutes and one takes it to six and a half. As a taster for 18 brand new artists this really is a lot to take in.
As a whole, I think I c can point to at least two outstanding tracks, five very good ones and a couple of interesting wild cards. But I do sense a cheerful democracy about the project – genuinely wanting to include as much of what offered itself for inclusion as possible.
The most notable tracks for me were "Go Now" by MICA featuring. TAZ and "They Would Probably Talk Sleep Or Fuck" by KAWAII. "Go Now" has original clips and beats and TAZ's luscious voice doing a real tune. It’s radio friendly (which I don’t mean in a bad way) with a naggingly offbeat two note call sign. KAWAII do Norwegian duet perkiness. There's a lazy metronomic drum machine style beat with a nice tune and some sweet natural instruments setting off great two voice interchanges.
KNOL BOWIE'S track with voice, wistful tune and guitar wiles away five minutes in a pleasantly BOO HEWARDINE kind of way. "We Weren't Put Together" by DAVID SUGAR is a cheerful frog kind of tune. It’s good pop stuff. But a full minute too long. I like "Tweeks" by OTTERLEY. This is Scots quirkiness with well travelled percussion and some familiar out of the box sounds. But the female voice is a big bonus and the tune is the catchiest poppiest tune so far.
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"Wades Into Water" by PALO ALTO - remixed by MOOKID - has its heart in the right cut and paste place and EMMET's " Maastricht" is a strong closing track, sounding like a moody film theme with a marvellously silly guitar solo thrown in for the dramatic climax bit.
None of the other tracks disgrace themselves at all. There is a tendency to reproduce what the basic equipment can do when the box is first opened so some of the ingredients sound very familiar. What' s fresh is the happiness with which the separate artists are throwing indie guitar band ideas in with electronic sources and discovering new song styles in the process. We do have artists here who genuinely sound enthusiastic about their own discoveries and additions from the laptop palette. We also have a couple of people coming from the other direction, adding real musicians and singers into their well-drilled dance production lines.
One problem I see for I Can Count is that the world now has a lot of well-developed music in this laid-back electronica meets organic sound territory. We have recently enjoyed JUANA MOLINA, ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, TUNNG, PSAPP, ADEM, SQUAREPUSHER and more yet. The roots go a long way back and the bar might already be a lot higher than half of this compilation is ready for. For the other half there are lots of possibilities.
www.icancount.co.uk
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