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LABEL PROFILE APESTAARTJE “Deep listening.” Concept or conceit? Perhaps a means to introduce solipsism as a direct conduit to musical enlightenment? Though operating on the cusp of pretentiousness, much of today’s electronica intellectualatti wouldn’t have it any other way. No pain, no gain—and what better price to pay than the elimination of casual elegance, of lazy interpretations, both of which posit music (as artform) to be quickly absorbed then hastily disposed of. The folks who operate Brooklyn’s Apestaartje label (pronounciation be damned!) want you to recalibrate your ears—a warning, a suggestion, a command? No, simply a necessity, as such aural tweaking is an enabler making tangible the label’s pointillistic and discrete software concréte. Epitomizing this is Koen Holtkamp, half of the Apestaartje braintrust. His two discs recorded as Aero, Pretend and Rises & Falls, more bluntly than ever smack of the hideous description folktronica, and more brilliantly than ever define that moniker with possibly its first honest meaning. Holtkamp manages to find loveliness in the most unlikely of places, whether it’s hiking through a Ryoji Ikeda-ian forest of pinpricks on Pretend’s “A Fine Place for Nothinging” or allowing for an edgy, metallic fog to ascend up and over the cascading banjo (!) chimes of Rises & Falls’ “Rises.” Morning/midnight music, through and through—breaching “After,” the closing will-’o-the-wisp on R&F, finds you bathing in maybe the most poignant, rush-to-the-heavens drone ever. Brendon Anderegg, operating under the name of, um, Anderegg—he of both the aforementioned banjo and the other half-owner of Apestaartje—continues Holtkamp’s fragmentary haikus on the soft-focus Anomia. Leave your computers out in the wilderness to soak up the tranquil sounds and upon your return their harddrives will echo the resonant phrases coaxed into life on display. “Memorize the Following I & II” recalls Eno’s tentative tape loop exercises, although here cycling static and sounds resembling dripping acid rain cloaked in bell decay replace Mr. E’s rippling organica. Low-key but not lo-fi, impeccably programmed and suggestive of places that harbor movements of silver machinistic bliss, Anomia soundtracks the microscopic realms of a diode diorama. Nicolas Collins lets his Pea Soup achieve mild boil on a concise little 3-incher. Recorded in a monastery in the Czech Republic in 1999, Collins states that his yawning tones became something of a site-specific raga. That’s a bit much, but the stretched-out sounds, reverberations of such an austere nature that their very minimalism virtually embodies the idea of “deep listening,” do achieve a certain substantiality, especially when George Cremaschi’s bass upsets the tonal applecart. Another installation piece less impressive when heard outside its installation, but there’s a crepuscular mannerism to it that is subtly unsettling. Minamo seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongues these days, going from relative obscurity to occupying their own distinctive niche—already plagues of hyperactive laptopists are imitating the Japanese group’s beguiling datafuzz. Beautiful doesn’t take them in any new directions, content with simply expounding their signature noises. Over beds of pliable data corruption, prismatic CD scratches and missteps, and thorny crackle, plangent guitars reveal desolate, parched vistas a-hum with pseudo-bees and various digitally-wrought fauna. Minamo makes even the most pristine of computer surfaces and intentional file-errors vibrate with the sweet air of a fainty humid spring day, moist, comfortable and inviting—these Beautiful enigmas are fast entering heavy rotation around these parts. Guitarist and Minamo computer whiz Keiichi Sugimoto has been flecking his bytes here and there as Fourcolor, with results as enigmatic as his collectives’. The liquid phantasms immersed in his Water Mirror are daubed with all the colors of the rainbow and their attendant sonics: the arcing space whispers and choral throb of “Fount”; the wafting, tentative fronds of “Soaking”; the evaporating, microprocessed hush on “Steam.” This is music—sound—half-glimpsed, apparitions first seen then not seen, images revealed that suddenly mutate into the barest resemblance of their former selves. Soft is at the emphatic core of these software-derived environments; it’s a cushiony interface, and Sugimoto clearly loves caressing his parameters. Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg launch the first Apestaartje summit as Mountains on their self-titled debut, the first to come wrapped in digipak (all previous releases came in elegantly sparse single sleeves). As reflected in the serene, tree-dense hillscape cover art, nestled in the crevasses, thickets, undergrowth and forests of these Mountains are many lovely things, strange and delicately made. Sitting at the plateau atop their throne of drones are Holtkamp and Anderegg, merging their sensibilities (and myriad guitars, electronics and sundry devices) in a rustic landscape of laptop nirvana. They manage to make a track such as “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass” sound like countryside melancholia, fluidly blending the nostalgic twang of ‘ol analog into the malleable cocoon of the digital domain. Track titles are as imagistic as the sounds: “Blown Glass Typewriter” might not be as obvious as you think (no keystroke taps or clickity-clack here), but the nervous tics, fibrillating strings and jellied movements illustrate something knocking the plastic tabs. De-glitched and emotionally engaged, the air drifting off said Mountains has the decidely wholesome whiff of something quite original. Let’s stay soft—very soft. Sébastien Roux presents a little nachtmusik wafting up through his Pillow. The French microsoundist looks to transcend genre and does so in such resplendent fashion it seems almost effortless. Eschewing the cut ‘n’ paste techniques so beloved by his cursor minors, he instead enters into a twisting love affair with the loop. “H 67” subsumes discarded guitar frets, effervescent chimes, and lolling atmospheres into its cul de sac, the bits tucked away to reconstitute and reappear in a siesta of glaze and gauze. On “Saratoga Springs,” the disconnected sounds wafting in and out of focus like so much scuffed emulsion resolve themselves into pre-fab nursery-box glossalalia amid the drone of a thousand dying electrical transformers, simultaneously becalming and tense. “Flicker” again conjures the ghost of cinema, shards of grainy noise and trembling waves the victims of nicked aperture plates, bits of groove teeming precariously about the edges. Fascinating, introspective pattern-plays. Regarding “patterns,” two of the label’s best compilations spotlight a few Apestaartje regulars, along with comparable souls whose insights fall within the same precious frames of reference. Colour and Pattern (subtitled Kleur En Motief) begins with Minamo’s “Hum,” more an explanation of their operating system(s) than what actually occurs throughout the track (sinuous, pink noises entwined amongst spoiled guitarstrokes, sine waves, rocket surge and blurred drone). I-Sound and Daniel Raffel act much more intrusively during the burned-bright buzz and relay whine of “Bottled Water,” while Jorg-Maria Zeger’s two tracks are sprightly, unusual interpretations of gamelan and megabyte discourse—extracted from the trusty electric guitar. Quite excellent. Object Set (subtitled And Motion) messes sneakily once again with the lexicon. Hardly propulsive in any sense (anti-propulsive, perhaps), the seven quiescent tracks are mostly intricate desktop ambient. Sébastien Roux’s “Rain On Mollon” is strangely affecting, almost celebratory, undulating hums and trills of fragile longing. Asuna doesn’t deviate from much of the same palette, his “singing bowl” drones (actually realized via harmonium and computer) lacking of the requisite dimension. Italian glitchmasters Tu m’ don’t disappoint, especially on the stop-start calliope of “After Dinner” and the reverse-guitar soundgarden of “Three, Trees.” For the finale, Duul_Drv revels in the meteorological glitch, his near-barren snowscapes punctured by hordes of buried insects masticating the ice, “field” recordings ripped from the field and set adrift in a collage of urban sprawl as well as processed murk. In direct contrast to his peers on this collection, Duul_Drv is practically the rebel, his distant drumbeats and spooky tooths poking holes in the soft machine. Mischief never sounded so good. DARREN BERGSTEIN • www.staartje.com |
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