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| Track list: 1. Four 2. Three 3. Wide Open 4. W 5. M 6. A1 7. A2 8. B1 9. Life Story 10. Love And Glory Running time: 61 minutes Released: 2015 |
OK, so another impulse purchase makes its way in before I can close out the Wedding Present box set of Peel. This time it is a collaboration between Ólafur Arnalds, of whom I am a fan, and Nils Frahm, who I don't know from Adam, but might find myself interested in after this...
These tracks are named... oddly. For the most part they say absolutely nothing about what they might contain. I find the opening notes of Four to be almost brilliantly enticing. I like the tune they play but the buzzing electro edge to them is annoying in the same way a wasp or fly in the room can be. When the tune dies out and we are left with just chimes if feels empty, unfulfilling.
Fulfillment is something I am craving right now. April was a difficult month in a number of ways and whilst I am starting May on holiday (well, not working this week; I'm at home) I am yet to get back to a baseline where I feel truly myself, or truly human. A combination of work stress and family matters, and a growing dissatisfaction with my solitary life. I am hoping that somewhere in these swirling sounds there might be some gold dust, the touchstone to reignite my velocity on this project (I'd like to get a listen in every day between now and when I go back to work on the 8th, but...).
Three is also very mellow and feels more complete somehow, whilst Wide Open has punching static, needle scratches, giving a staccato, radio-signal loss effect. I think this is really effective. It sounds like the tune behind these breaks would work as a fluid number but the ticks shake it up, making it sound more dense with notes than it actually is. I feel like the closest thing to this I've heard before is Jon Hopkins, not Arnalds' solo work. In places it hints at a much deeper web of sounds, but they are all inaccessible, held back behind the barrier built by the static. It could be massively frustrating and a let down, but it ends up being highly satisfying.
W sounds like videogame music... rising tension, peaks and troughs, right out of cyberpunk. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense at all, by the by. Even listening on a sunny spring evening this piece is very effective at generating an oppressive atmosphere of dark intrigue. There isn't really that much going on in the track, and yet it is gripping for most of its length. By the end the trick has grown old, and the relaxing tension leaves me cold.
It seems that this double-disc collection was originally 4 releases, three of which make up the one album I am listening to tonight. There has definitely been a shift in tone from the laid back sounds of that first trio of tunes to this next couple, all edgy. There is a nice rhythm to this though, more staccato, pulsing, evoking sci-fi and space.
On the surface level this is quite a bleak sound but beneath the distant beeps and clicks and whirs there is real heart, and I find myself tapping out rhythms that aren't necessarily actually there as it plays. These two composers have created a space that invites you to hear things in it. Whether claustrophobic or wide open in tone their sounds push you to imagine others, faint echoes in their chambers, tapping time. These pieces work best when they are busy, the slower, sparser moments feel empty, if only by comparison to the main thrust of the work.
As much as I am rather enjoying this, it is awfully samey in places, and when they hit on a theme or loop that doesn't jive with me the charm falls away fast.
I see that at the start of the 13 minute long epic, B1. A low warbling sound with a repeating pattern of odd sounds that I cannot put into words. It leaves me very cold and there is not enough variation in the first 3 minutes of the track to make the discomfiture abate. The track does evolve a bit over its run, but it never really breaks from the initial mould and I find it by far the weakest moment to date. There is just too much emphasis on repetition and those odd pattern-notes. I would argue the main meat of the track is the background, where the change really happens, but it is locked away behind these unpleasant blotchy sounds which simply make the piece too unapproachable for me. And then it ends in the most abrupt fashion... just odd.
Hopefully the last two numbers return to form... early signs are good, as Life Story is a nice piano melody that, whilst very different in tone from the early tracks does have the same base engagement, the underlying warmth of the sound, framed in a way as to draw you into the web. The rustling static that serves as percussion is so soft in places as to be almost imperceptible, but I guarantee you would miss it if it wasn't there... it adds a fuzz, a glow, to the sounds of the keys which otherwise might be too stark and cold.
With all that said, there is still a loneliness to the track, and it leaves me with a little lump in my throat as it closes and we tick over into Love and Glory, which has a similar structure. This piece is more hopeful, lighter. Uncertain but expected happiness, this feels much more a celebration, as befits its title.
Overall, then... a wonderful set of tunes, one outlier aside. It's a pity that outlier was almost 25% of the disc by time.
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