Only Solitaire: G. Starostin's Record Reviews, Reloaded c intro Notes
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- REFUGE (2013) 1) Rca (+); 2) Birdie; 3) Rca (-); 4) Leaves; 5) Lost; 6) Escape; 7) Marauders. CBLs output rates seem to have slowed down considerably since Twentythree
- Refuge
- CARIBOU (+ MANITOBA)
WORLD OF SLEEPERS (2006) 1) Abiogenesis; 2) Vortex; 3) Photosynthesis; 4) Get Theory; 5) Gryning; 6) Transmission / Intermission; 7) World Of Sleepers; 8) Proton / Electron; 9) Erratic Patterns; 10) Flytta Dig; 11) Betula Pendula. No, I'm really not comfortable with this «psybient» term. Or, tell you what: let us keep it, but let's spell it differently — let it be «sci-bient», because this is what these guys really are: they are using ambient landscapes to promote various (but connected) scientific concerns. Look at the track titles here — the very first one is ʽAbiogenesisʼ (a term that I personally abhor as a linguist, because it should literally translate to "birth of non-life" rather than the surmised "birth of life from non-life"), where the music is supposed to serve as a metaphor for... well, you know. (It's a little odd that life had to originate to such perfectly programmed trip-hop beats, but then again, you weren't there, and certain carbon-based lifeforms already were. It's also odd that Nature gave signals to "wake up" in perfect English, transferred over imperfect radio waves, but that's what you get when Anglo-Saxon revisionism of natural history eats up the minds of even the starkest Scandinavian resistants). Birth and various ways of functioning of life, as seen not from a religious, but from a fully updated modern scientific perspective — and all the attached ecological concerns as well — this is what constitutes the «philosophic core» of World Of Sleepers, and it's all fine and dandy, but if you only had the music and no titles (or occasional vocal samples) to proffer any guidance, I am not certain that the symbolism could be so easily decoded. With a stronger rhythmic base than last time, but without any ominously overwhelming bass lines, most of the tracks here are just soft synthesized sound patterns over potentially danceable beats; sometimes pretty, sometimes suspenseful, but not particularly suggestive of monumental natural processes. Thus, I suppose that ʽBetula Pendulaʼ, for maximum authentic effort, should probably be listened to on a nice, warm, slightly cloudy day, within the confines of an actual birch grove, illustrating the slim, elegant grace of nature (rather than the artificial consequences of a slash-and-burn approach to agriculture that usually results in the appearance of birch colonies, but that's sort of beyond the point). In this setting, the interaction between clouds, birch leaves lazily swaying in the breeze, and CBL's slowly overlapping synth loops, gradually pushing each other out of existence without any malicious intent, is bound to achieve its double purpose — make you unconsciously eco-conscious, and become analogously charmed by digital software. Likewise, the best way to enjoy ʽPhotosynthesisʼ is get yourself a textbook, learn all the details of the process, and then try to correlate them with the various stages of the composition, which gradually builds up from the same soft waves of keyboard ambience to a dynamic groove with «acid» elements, while a concerned male voice keeps asking the question "what about the forests?", probably sampled from some environmentalist documentary or other (doesn't really matter). ʽVortexʼ must have your mind spinning around as the main keyboard line is looped around the usual electronic windwall, creating, if not a real vortex, then at least a spiral; with ʽProton / Electronʼ, you probably have to think of yourself as a neutron, caught without a charge in between the negative high-pitched pipsqueaks of the electron and the positive satisfied bass grunts of the proton; and as for ʽErratic Patternsʼ, I honestly have not been able to notice any, so I guess this must be some sort of hint — maybe the erratic pattern is you, as opposed to the perfectly sequenced mid-tempo groove of the track. In the end, even if common opinion usually selects World Of Sleepers as CBL's peak, my own impression is that the album is slightly weaker than its predecessor — the atmosphere is just too soft and snoozy throughout, with nothing to really shake you up like that Floydian bassline at the beginning of ʽCentral Plainsʼ; and also, it seems to be making much more of a compromise with contemporary electronics than they used to, which somewhat dulls the impact. On many of these tracks, they could have made the electronic veils more thick and imposing, rather than sticking to the same kind of thin, ghostly sound that makes everything sound the same in the end. But all that said, the results are still impressive — a long, humble ode to Life as an accumulation of patterns that organize system out of chaos and then, through ever-increasing complexity, create the subjective impression of chaos once again. I sort of get that, even if it takes a trip of reason rather than an impulse of the heart to do so. In any case, a thumbs up. INTERLOPER (2010) 1) Interloper; 2) Right Where It Ends; 3) Central Plain; 4) Supersede; 5) Init; 6) Euphotic; 7) Frog; 8) M; 9) 20 Minutes; 10) Polyrytmi. I forgot to mention that, apparently, not only are all those album covers geometrically and stylistically similar to each other, but even the tracks run in completely continuous order: thus, ʽInterloperʼ here is numbered 24, implying that the LP is to be understood as the third part of a complete whole — and, as it turned out later, the last part, although there's nothing here to instinctively indicate any sort of grand completion of one's purpose. But if The Artist tells you so, then The Artist must be right, because there's nothing more sacred than The Original Artistic Intention. Even the almighty gods cower and recede before the stunning power of the OAI, so what's to be said of a simple humble reviewer? Nevertheless, the simple humble reviewer will try to gather all the nastiness he can muster and state that Interloper brings no surprises to the table — it is still masterful, but it seems that the duo's grasp is weakening, as the sonic-emotional effect of most of these tracks becomes restricted to almost dangerous levels of subtlety. The title track features a single delay-treated electronic loop played out against a background of stately, but shallow-sounding Eno-esque synth tapestries: well-constructed, I admit, but so effortlessly sliding through the senses that I cannot, for the life of me, visualize it or emotionally experience it in any way. Not too pretty, not too ugly, and not even representative of an exciting parallel universe. I mean, if those were the sounds of a parallel universe, I might consider settling there (it's always a good perspective to settle down in a place where "nothing ever happens"), but go there as a tourist? No way. The only track where something does happen is ʽRight Where It Endsʼ, with its more sharply expressed trip-hop rhythms, acid keyboard lines, and evil whispers. Incidentally, fans of the album often complain of this very track as disrupting the flow — I understand them perfectly, but the complaint can only register if you are really taken in by the flow; if you don't think the flow's too cool, then a little bit of disruption is actually good for the health. At least there's a definite feel of suspense and concealed danger here, and that's a good thing, because what's a parallel universe, really, if it's all safer than a mother's womb? Everything else, well... my biggest beef is that it's way too long and way too even. The best masters of ambient, like it or not, still have ways to shift the mood from track to track, or at least to capitalize on a few brilliantly selected chord sequences. On Interloper, tones and overdub structures matter far more than chord sequences, and when there are discernible chord sequences, they sound way too much like adult contemporary (for instance, the melody of ʽ20 Minutesʼ could have very easily be encountered on a Phil Collins solo album, although he'd never bother to wrap it up in so many additional layers, of course). Or, when they hit upon a good one, they can spoil the moment with a totally unnecessary and generic percussion track (ʽInitʼ, which starts out beautifully, but do they really want us to slow-dance to it or what?). With repeated listens, you can probably get used to the softness of it all, and, most importantly, Interloper preserves the warm human spirit that has always characterized CBL, but I have to confess that I thought better of them when they were drawing their influences in about equal measures from Eno, Tangerine Dream, and Floyd, than now, when they seem to be so much concentrated on «light» rather than «darkness» — because light always shines brightest in contrast with darkness; and these guys are good, but not good enough to become absolute Gods of Light — the more they try to be, the more boring the results become. So, not a thumbs down, but definitely a step down from the quality of the previous two albums, although I think we really saw it coming (with music like this, holding on to an exciting standard for very long is downright impossible — not even a musical genius like Eno could boast a decade-long uninterrupted career of ambient masterpieces). VLA (2011) 1) VLA. Short for Very Large Array, apparently, a radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico, known for important observations on black holes, protoplanetary discs, and other stuff that makes great fodder for young aspiring artists of the «sci-bient» variety. There's not much to describe — it's just one hour-long track consisting of a steady hum, recurrently shifting pitch back and forth. If you listen very closely, you will hear occasional additional sounds: some distant cling-clanging, a few lines of faraway electronic pulses, faint echoes of what may or may not have been voices... basically, you will find yourself in the role of a SETI specialist desperately searching for anything that might pass for a sign of extraterrestrial life. And failing, of course. It would be too easy to call the experiment CBL's Thursday Afternoon — no matter how minimalistic, Eno's hour-long static panorama could still qualify as music, whereas this here is just sound, with no melodic component whatsoever. Nevertheless, both are similar in that (a) you can basically play them starting at any point and shut them off whenever you like to and (b) the parts are actually very subtly different, but the difference is purely formal unless you agree to study the data under a microscope, and who'd want that? Also, strange enough, VLA actually works as a background setting — that hum certainly isn't «emotionally rewarding» in any sense, but I have listened to it all the way through while being busy with other matters, and it never got on my nerves, which might just be the point of the album. See, the whole thing represents the Vastness of Space, and if the Vastness of Space gets on your nerves, you probably don't belong in it. I am certainly not going to go head over heels about it and spew nonsense about how listening to this record should expand our mind and enhance our conception of space and perceive our own limited, minuscule, and totally insignificant existence in this universe as merely a random blip in the overall immanent texture. (I mean, it's all true, but why not read a good book on cosmology instead?). But if you have an hour-long important job to do and you want to get a little bit of that «me so importantly locked up in my ivory tower with a telescope and stars for companionship» feel to help you get the job done, VLA might just be the perfect recipe for such an occasion. At the very least, it will make the time pass quicker... or slower, depending on the circumstances. TWENTYTHREE (2011) 1) Arecibo; 2) System; 3) Somewhere In Russia; 4) Terpene; 5) Inertia; 6) VLA (edit); 7) Kensington Gardens; 8) Held Together By Gravity. For the weak-willed and feeble-minded, the very same day upon which Carbon Based Lifeforms introduced us to the sonic monumentality of VLA (July 23, 2011) also saw the release of a «normal» album — so, if you are spiritually baffled and morally destroyed by the sixty minutes of ʽVLAʼ, here is a nice little compromise for you: ten minutes of ʽVLAʼ (in the form of an edit), plus seven other seven-to-ten minute tracks that pretty much do the same thing — only in several different ways. It's kind of like spending your time in a museum: would you want to spend one hour of your time staring at one fabulous landscape, or divide that time between eight different ones? Actually, the correct answer would depend on many circumstances (starting with the individual quality of the pictures and ending with the individual quality of your soul), but here we won't be getting too pretentious about that, and just admit that VLA is an extreme, and Twentythree feels quite accessible in its company. It also feels somewhat more pleasing to me than its two predecessors — despite the stark minimalism and a complete shift to the hardcore ambient paradigm. The major reason is that the silly electronic beats are gone: they never really needed them anyway, and now that the music no longer pretends to invite you to dance, you can just tune in with the cosmos and stuff, because, you know, The Creator has a Masterplan and it doesn't necessarily involve all the living things getting into a trip-hop groove or anything. It does involve various atmospheric shifts and transitions, though, and there's plenty here, from track to track. Again, the composers are jumping from macro- to microcosm here: ʽAreciboʼ, with its obvious reference to the Arecibo Observatory, is clearly influenced by planetary movement, whereas ʽTerpeneʼ should probably induce you to feel the smell of conifer resin (at the very least, there is definitely something sticky-liquid-like about the wobbly flow of its programmed loops). ʽInertiaʼ brings you back to the world of intertwining underground caverns, with gentle gurgling streams trickling through and harmless night owls and bats hooing off echoes (although why it is called ʽInertiaʼ, we'll never know); ʽSystemʼ is the closest they come to transmitting the idea of being lost in space. ʽSomewhere In Russiaʼ, one of the few tracks with the very, very faint presence of an underlying beat, probably means Chukotka rather than Moscow — somewhere, in short, where temperatures are quite low and human presence is scarce. In direct contrast, ʽKensington Gardensʼ are lively, replete with tolling bells, singing birds, and echoes of what seems to have once been noises made by children and other visitors — yet now there's a certain ghostliness to it all, and, in fact, many of these tracks could be thought of as coherently conceptual, like it's a record about a universe that suddenly, for no particular reason, found itself devoid of people. I mean, most ambient albums give off an air of total solitude, but Twentythree quite specifically feels like an odd deconstruction project, where you have a soundscape that is densely populated by actual people, and then, whoosh, all human presence has been erased and only faint echoes remain. It probably wouldn't have hurt them to find at least a few strikingly impressive melodic lines for some of these tracks, rather than resort to the usual «glide one note into another so that nobody even notices» technique — but the music still works, and the tracks seem alive and meaningful in the vein of all those old Klaus Schulze records. At least I can say that it made me feel like the only living man on Earth for a brief while, and I'd rather get that from music than from a VR headset, so while I'm still hesitant to move my thumbs in the presence of hardcore ambient, let us count this as an endorsement of sorts. REFUGE (2013) 1) Rca (+); 2) Birdie; 3) Rca (-); 4) Leaves; 5) Lost; 6) Escape; 7) Marauders. CBL's output rates seem to have slowed down considerably since Twentythree — the only complete album in five years has been this soundtrack for an obscure indie movie that allegedly tells some sort of macabre story about one family's survival after a mass catastrophe and is usually pigeonholed in the «survival horror» genre. You'd think that CBL, of all people, would be the most uncanny choice for composer — but I guess this was precisely the point, to have a couple of people known for making some of the most serene music in the universe to lend their hand in the creation of a disturbing, suspense-based movie. Then again, you don't really need to go farther than ʽCentral Plainsʼ to be reminded that these dangerous Danes (Swedes, really, but «dangerous Danes» rings so much cooler) can also be fairly threatening and suspenseful once they get the opportunity to saddle that vibe. That said, there is not much about Refuge, an uncharacteristically short (less than 45 minutes!) collection of ambient soundscapes very much in the vein of Twentythree, that would suggest danger or threat — at least, not immediate ones. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the artists simply used up some of the outtakes from previous sessions: most of the tracks sound like less elaborate little brothers to their far more thoroughly polished elders. Everything sounds nice, elegant, melancholic, but without too much depth: ʽLeavesʼ, for instance, floats on a shiny, multi-layered, but common bed of synth tones with a repetitive two-note drip-drop landing on them at regular intervals — well, we've heard that kind of «look at how elegant the universe is in its static mode and how all life is just a regularly ordered icing on top» musical metaphor so many times now that it is futile to expect some new epiphany. But it's pretty, all the same. The best track is arguably ʽRca (-)ʼ, with a steady, carefully orchestrated electronic crescendo that Godspeed You! Black Emperor might well have appreciated — it's a little lost out there in the middle, but it well deserves your undivided attention for about four minutes, with layer upon layer of synth added until you really start getting the impression of climbing the proverbial stairway to heaven, as the air becomes sharper, the temperature colder, and the intuitive feeling of a supernatural presence more and more distinct. Unfortunately, even GY!BE would probably complain that the track is much too short, and the climax is over way too quickly, for the track to become truly cathartic. The soundtrack curse, striking again and again! The only time the record actually comes close to becoming «scary» is, amusingly, on its most optimistically labeled track — ʽEscapeʼ, structured as soft techno with a deep, almost subconsciously planted, bassline and, on top, populated with what sounds like a series of alien explosions, coming from faraway but powerful enough to resonate all over your living room. That sound is so atypically harsh for CBL that the track really stands out, and in quite a respectable way at that, although eventually it morphs into full-scale danceable techno, and the explosions are almost lost against a foreground of much less interesting loops and effects. And then, for the last track (ʽMarauders"), we return back to the same predictable world of static serenity (well, dark serenity this time — sounds like all those other «out there in space, watching faraway nebulae» tracks of theirs), lightly sprinkled with electronic chirps from interplanetary-flying birds on their way to the nearest warphole. In short, nice and, like almost everything from these guys, perfectly listenable, but a soundtrack is a soundtrack — or, rather, a soundtrack is a collection of second-rate material that you wouldn't normally want to include on a «proper» LP, especially when you're a loyal disciple of Tangerine Dream. (Okay, not that loyal. Being loyal to TD necessarily implies a schedule of at least three albums per year, proportionally increasing at the same rate at which the artist is running out of new ideas.) For major fans only, I'd say; others will just have to wait and find out if there is still another Taoist way left for CBL to tell us how wonderful and mysterious can a world be in which, for all it's worth, nothing is really happening. CARIBOU (+ MANITOBA) 
START BREAKING MY HEART (2001) 1) Dundas, Ontario; 2) People Eating Fruit; 3) Mammals Vs. Reptiles; 4) Brandon; 5) Children Play Well Together; 6) Lemon Yoghourt; 7) James' Second Haircut; 8) Schedules & Fares; 9) Paul's Birthday; 10) Happy Ending. I know relatively little about the thing called «jazztronica» or «nu jazz», but if the most typical artists in that style happen to be Amon Tobin and Flying Lotus, whose works are quite familiar to me, then I'm happy to say that on this album, Mr. Dan Snaith, a 23-year old artist hailing from Dundas, Ontario who used to call himself Manitoba before cruel life forced him to change this to Caribou — anyway, on this album Mr. Dan «Manitoba» Snaith sort of invents his own subgenre of jazztronica, which we might just as well call «kiddie-jazztronica». Yes, he would go on to far more accessible and seriously different things, but he did start out as a self-made electronic composer, and one with a vision all his own, even if that vision remains on a scale so humble that «nice and pretty» is probably the strongest reaction that may be honestly experienced when listening to this stuff. Snaith's primary tool throughout is a softly tuned, warbled synthesizer — producing muffled, Fender Rhodes-like electric piano sounds, as well as various chiming textures, so that the entire record has a bright, sunshine-like feel, enhanced by occasional usage of equally soft and calm acoustic guitars and harps; as for percussion, he is normally content to stick to the most «primitive» of drum machines, often imitating jazzy brush technique or Indian tablas, and sometimes probably sampling Snaith's own drumming. If all of this were played as «normal» jazz, the album would hardly hold any interest for anybody; it is the astute combination of analog and digital elements that makes it what it is — a series of impressionistic musical paintings that combine jazzy vivaciousness with friendly hi-tech and a certain childish innocence. The whole thing is a hustle-bustle, but one that seems to take place right under your nose, without any attempts to separate the background from the foreground or create additional sonic depth through echoes, tricky mixing, and rich layers of overdubs. What you have is simple, loud, but inobtrusive melodies — playful and careless in tone, but not altogether insubstantial. Why they should necessarily be associated with Canada (the first track is ʽDundas, Ontarioʼ — Snaith's homeland) remains somewhat of a mystery, as does the album's title, because there is absolutely nothing heartbreaking about the music: but chalk it up to the necessity of the Artistic Enigma, quite forgivable in the face of the overall loveliness of the sound anyway, and let us just evaluate the music on its own terms, regardless of whatever the artist wants, because now it is out of his hands anyway. So, in this alternate unreal reality, ʽDundas, Ontarioʼ is a place symbolized by several meditative «electric piano» lines criss-crossed with a toe-tappy xylophone part — two voices, one pensive and intimate, another one playful and arrogant, a Florestan and a Eusebius of sorts. This trick is later reprised in different varieties — for instance, the interplay between the somewhat dreary, continuous keyboard parts and the jumpy folksy acoustic guitars of ʽChildren Play Wellʼ, or the dreamy psychedelic synths and the jerky jazzy bassline of ʽSchedules & Faresʼ — and provides the bulk of sheer entertainment. In any case, this is a very active record: there is not a single track that would not have a lively rhythmic base or at least a second, dynamic, voice that stands out in stark contrast to the more ambient/static loops of the first one. The most active track is ʽLemon Yoghourtʼ, which somebody on RYM aptly called "a great track to jerk off to", not because it has the word "lemon" in it, but because the music itself does sound like it invites you to, ahem, «squeeze your lemon» for about two minutes, with a very insistent multi-channel keyboard loop that might just sound like the speedy dripping of lemon juice, but who knows... anyway, sexual innuendos aside, it's a fun sound, and the track is quite strategically placed at the middle of the album, guaranteed to wake you up if you accidentally fall asleep on one of the longer tracks, like ʽPeople Eating Fruitʼ (which does not at all sound like people eating fruit, unless you take all the crackly glitching in the background to be symbolic of gnashing teeth and suckling lips — but it does sound like a joyful morning prayer-ritual conducted by a bunch of shiny happy people who probably do eat a lot of fruit). Longest of all is ʽPaul's Birthdayʼ, a track that could probably act like a perfect sampler for the rest of the album, because it's got it all — a cute combo between digital and analog (there's a nice harp glissando acting as the track's main hook), all of the man's beloved synth tones, jazzy basslines and bits of modal brass soloing, and even a surprisingly funky arrangement of digital glitches replacing the bass groove for a period of time. I have no idea who the heck is Paul, but I do know that he got himself a fairly unique birthday present here. The closest vocal analogy to this record would probably be something like contemporary Broadcast albums, but even those would either have more «depth» or more «grief» to them — the advantage of Start Breaking My Heart is its total and complete cuddliness, which never gets sickening due to the technical mastery of the artist, and provides you with yet another charming advertisement for the paradisiac qualities of Canada (an imaginary Canada, one should always add before the charmed listener actually starts packing). There might not be enough memorable melodic themes here to assert compositional greatness, but the overall sound of the record, once you let it seep in, is unforgettable, and definitely deserving its thumbs up. 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