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LABEL PROFILE U-COVER: THE TRANSPARENTE SERIES A limited pressed CD in a clear Trimpak is format and aesthetic leitmotif for the U-Cover Transparente series, an art-less no-frills affair of stark lines of minimal black on chrome in see-through plastic. Though what this transparency ultimately signifies, apart from the jouissance of design in itself, in terms of any discrete identity distinguishing it from other sub-label series in the U-cover “suite” (e.g. U-Cover CDR, U-Cover minidisc) seems distinctly opaque. Just eight albums in total comprise the mini-catalog, spanning the period March 2006 to August 2007. Keynote release is Ontayso’s own Procesamiento Digital Uno, following on the heels stylistically of their Silentes release, Magical Tone Tricks. As with that collection, although it’s recognizably their own soundpool the listener swims in, the springboard is detectable as one wrought in Berlin, almost inevitably through Chain Reaction out of Basic Channel. Over a 4-track tract of microvariate minimalism, Koen Lybaert and Esther Santoyo sparsely layer lightly fuzzed drawn-out gauzes of grainy attenuated ambience over insistent rhythmicities—primarily pulses—chewing over the dub, spitting out the techno, retaining essential kickdrum thrum, renouncing alternate-beat snareshots or hi-hat imperatives of mainstream mnml. PD1 enfolds manipulated field recordings, synthetics and allusions to 90s dub-techno templates, the whole being Abletoned into the Now. The somewhat prosaic title is subverted by the autopoetics of the musical content—warmer and more imbued with emotive resonance than might be expected. The prodigious volume of this duo’s output means there’s little hanging around to be done between this inaugural release (March 2006) and the sequel, Procesamiento Digital Dos (May 2006). Procesamiento Digital Dos sees them reading from the same Berlin-set screenplay, its blend of noir-ish pads and pulsing delay-infused atmospheres following the odd diversion somewhere in hearing distance of Badalamenti territory. PD2 is a continuation of their inquiry into the meeting point of dark-hued atmospheres and fractured dub tech, though this outing is more ambiently inclined overall than the first. A way beyond midnight subterranean scenario is populated by metallic-edged stabs, drones and pulses, conjuring up a sonography ghosted through by something resembling the spectral spirit of early Vladislav Delay. Chileans Claudio Cisterna and Daniel Nieto are kin in composition as well as Chilean provenance. Both operate from a similar base shifting between percussive minimal techno, ambient digi-dub, and glitchy IDM. When Nieto, already variously released on U-Cover as Danieto, gets together with Cisterna, aka Flipper, so named after the feel of pinball-playing evoked by his digi-fidgetry, they deal in a geeky version of Latino-laced micro-tech that never sits still. It gets its kicks en route from Santiago via Detroit to Berlin’s ~scape-ry, taking in stations on the way. Ultimately, Multitono is more bedroom booty-twitch than dancefloor dialectic, which, with minimal techno largely packaged to eat itself at the moment, offers a more personalised alternative for the listener whose brain digs the cerebral dance. Very much a “lite” variety, if prone to a form of hyperactive (dis)order in the percussive and bleep-bloop departments, Danieto and Flipper operate somewhere out of an annexe to Ezekiel Honig’s lounge in Luciano’s house. Danieto’s solo effort, Prebuffer-Abducibot, is another expertly wrought specimen, adhering to Deadbeat/Pole-founded principles of brittle electronic dub with a beating micro-tech heart. Crisp and precise, the sound field fizzes with colour, draping brightly glazed keyboard lines over beats, now head-nodding now booty-bopping. An artful off-setting of low-end bass bumps and high-end digi-trickery is maintained. At times the architecure and strategies sit generally somewhere in between Jan Jelinek and Afuken, though Nieto manages to subtly localize his brew with a few signature embellishments (holding any faux-Latino cheese, thankfully). Although over 77+ minutes, for all its technical finery, the lightweight and ludic feel can lead to fatigue and leave one wanting a bit more substance and ballast . Fragments+ finds Tokyo trio Motoro Faam making mixed-mode mischief, with Mizukami Ryuta moving his samples and programming into Kato Ayumi and Kobara Daisuke's classically-trained chambers. A communing of post-digital flotsam and jetsam with post-classical piano and violin is the outcome, as the refinement of piano and violin étude meets post-digital decline to form musical collage compositions. More than your average U-Cover, its various pieces seem sprung from artistic concept, though its polite avant-garde quality is not possessed of a po-face. A typical Fragment features extensive passages of rippling piano imbued with other organica being rubbed up against by Ryuta’s rhythm programming and sundry digitalia in flights of post-classical crossover fancy. This questing collection’s eight original tracks are augmented by two bonus remixes, best of which is predictably a Berlin-channeling rework by Ontayso. A Phosphorous Spot is the second full-length from Belgian laptop man, Bernard Zwijzen aka Sonmi451, following on 2005’s U-Cover debut, Vladivostok. Paying more attention to the atmo-ambient topping than in his debut, Zwijzen layers soft synths in graceful waves and neon washes, with the odd voice, electric piano or tuned percussion, and slides them over clicky slick rhythms. Following an approach fairly and squarely located in pop-microsound cum minimal electronica, A Phosphorous Spot’s sonic tradition is of a lineage that can be traced to late-Kranky (see esp. Christopher Bissonnette and Chihei Hatekayama) via mid-12k (cf. Fourcolor), with an odd nod towards Kompakt Pop Ambient. Overall a pleasant listening experience, though at times in thrall to the work of Shuttle358 (esp. on opener “Steady Drop”), even extending to a mirroring of nomenclatural morphology (Shuttle358 / Sonmi451). In places A Phosphorous Spot asserts its own stylistic muscle a little more, getting into a more downtempo-IDM groove. Quality pop electronica in anyone’s book. The seventh Transparente comes courtesy of a kindred spirit of U-Cover, the UK’s Wil Bolton, aka Cheju, of Boltfish label reknown. “A mixture of warm synth tones, crunchy broken beats, and layered atmospheric textures” is how Wil describes his style, which will suffice as an abstract to the musical study which is Diode, a well-composed and produced slice of glitchy melodic IDM/electronica that recalls the halcyon days of 2004 when this sub-genre was flavour of of the electronic month. Now its contours feel somewhat over-familiar. The odd orientalist exoticism together with the name Cheju perhaps indicate a past connection with cultures Far Eastern that occasionally injects a special flavour into the music. This idiosyncracy aside, Diode’s post-beatbox click-funk and electro-lite grooves, blithely hazy atmospheres and soft synths are now ubiquitous signifiers, and this collection’s combination of nostalgic elegiacism and upbeat sci-fi dance gestures struggles to rise above the workmanlike. Not to be left out, Bolton’s buddy in Boltfish biz, Mint, chimes in with another set of old school post-Warp Toytronica. Binary Counting is the final Transparente offering, on which Murray Fisher mints a release covering a range of electronic stylings. Mint is unashamedly chewy melodic synthesizer music, whose sounds of tinkle and wibble are melded to fairly orthodox arrangements. There’s something of the flavour of film thematics to some of these pieces, though rendered edgier by the foregrounding of electro-inclined beat programming. It would be nice for this profileing of what is overall a quality series of releases to go it with a bang rather than a whimper, but ultimately, as with his soulmate, Cheju, Mint’s sonic armoury seems largely chewed over and second-hand; there is nothing of especial resonance, no truly fresh or vital element to lift Binary Counting above the herd of busy-buzzy clicky-clunky IDM releases of recent years. That said, there is enough beguiling material spread across the Transparente series to satisfy the lover of things electronic and otherwise. RECENT CDR LIMITED ISSUES COOLER Details For Gloomy People ENTIA NON Inter Alia HAKOBUNE Sense Of Place REMOTE_ VERSUS ONTAYSO Celestion • Details for Gloomy People, András Jakab’s second Cooler release on U-Cover, is a hyper-timbral slalom through a Hungarian tract of beat-driven electronica country. Its crunchy funk-spiked slopes are fringed with muscular basslines, and the familiar squelch and bleep of post-electro synthetics. Draw a line connecting Autechresque beat design via the elaborations of Neo-Ouija to the instrumental post-hip-hop of early n5md/Merck and you’ll find Cooler’s coordinates. But the bulk of Jakab’s arrangements are so cluttered and attention-deficit that by a quarter of the way into this set, the listener may be begging for forebearance in the relentless attack on spatiality, as even the kitchen sink is imperilled by his everything-but approach. Cooler’s report card for performance on Details for Gloomy People sees a gold star for programming sleight of hand and efforts in the service of crowdpleasing cancelled out by black marks for grandstanding and being easily led by software. Ontayso (quelle surprise!) drop in at the end of the affair to casually model a more reined-in specimen draped in shadows and fog and a mean slow and low demeanour that might usefully be learnt from. A minimally resourced 11:47 that puts the previous 48:38 of extravagance in the shade. Australian James McDougall is clearly something of a collector of sonic artefacts, and his Entia Non project is the outlet for them - collages of found sounds, tape reels and vinyl records manipulated into euphonic soundscapes. On Inter Alia, his mission—“to explore possibilities, to seek what is interesting in sound and to be free of any limitations”—is accomplished through the sculpting of fields of soundflow teeming with voices and noises off - a commingling of all manner of naturalia, rustle and whistle, crackle and hum, chime and blur. A welter of partly tuned audio a-writhe with unpitched material streams around the listener, reminding on occasions of the more abstract end of labels like Room40 and Spekk, on others of Mystery Sea’s night ocean drones. Inter Alia’s blend of fluttering electronics and pandora’s box of organic fragments results in a collection whose aleatory trajectory can never quite be predicted, and is all the more enjoyable for it. For the average u-cover lover, however, accustomed to at least some of the reassuring elements of conventional musicality - structure, harmony, melody, rhythm, such material is possibly unsettlingly minimal. Among the key influences on Takahiro Yorifuji (aka Hakobune) is, apparently, nature, especially the seasons. And it’s an immediately suggestive audio linkage, for this Kyoto-resident’s Sense Of Place is imbued with an elemental harmonious feeling of pastoral idyll, albeit more actively engaged when the demands of light and shade call. Guitar is Hakobune’s chosen device, enhanced on a couple of occasions with field recordings, which he draws out into a lightly droning tonefloat to create uncluttered tableaux, redolent of a more sonically ascetic Japanese cousin of the Kompakt Pop Ambient sound sculptors. To be more referentially precise, though, Hakobune’s patch in the increasingly populated guitar-drone territory is marked out by the outlines of a US tradition of ambient-space including names like (once more) Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, and Windy & Carl, with traces of more European voices, nearest of kin being Manual, begat of of Robin Guthrie and Vini Reilly. But Hakobune really does push beyond the envelope of influence here, spooling his string-swoon out here into beauteous ooze, there into glazed haze. One of the most satisfying and cohesive of this CDR bunch. The seventy-four minutes contained on Celestion are spread over just two tracks, the first being a forty-minute extended version of what was originally a much shorter cut on an eponymous 12” by Remote_, who is none other than Mike Oliver, the man behind the now sadly moribund Smallfish Records. Oliver’s judgment in allowing what was enjoyable enough as a 7-minute puppy off the leash for a fully 40-minute Great Dane run is, to say the least, questionable, as landmarks are few and far between in an endless ebb and flow of what starts out as a pleasant enough dub-tech excursion whose two-chord trick, enlivened only by microvariations in its vapour trails of delay, gradually palls. A halfway house key change provides momentary relief, before becoming a micro-water torture in itself, as this single motif is done to death for the remainder of the piece with discreet beat amendments. A rework by Ontayso is more deserving of its allocated half hour, “Celestion II” being overlaid with radio-comms effluvia, genuinely engaging synth swathes, synco-pulses, and questing delay manipulations, providing for the welcome movement, atmosphere, and textural variegation absent in its predecessor. AMBIDEXTROUS Rocket Mind JOSEPH AUER Vhast QUOSP Soundscapes I • Three major strands of U-Cover’s textural and stylistic demographic are represented here, being roughly crunchy IDM, smooth post-Detroit techno, and mellifluous beatless ambient. First up is Muscovite Nick Zavriev, whose decade of workmanlike service as Ambidextrous has made him one of the best known of the Russian electronic music brigade. Known for his contributions to past Toytronic, Merck, and Neo Ouija assemblages, his stock-in-trade is a rhythmic electronica variety dribbled with synthesizer wibble and wash that could almost be presented as an illustrative example for a musical glossary entry on the term “IDM”. Rocket Mind is classic mid-period IDM, conceiving the sub-genre in terms of a period spanning from Autechre’s Incunabula (1993) to right about now. Though IDM’s hybridised sound is the model for his signature, Zavriev deploys sundry vintage analoguery to tap into a range of 70s-80s-90s electronic stylings, drawing on electro, synth-pop, breakbeat, italo-disco, house, and, above all, ambient techno. Rocket Mind is apparently inspired by a trip to Baikonur cosmodrome, as evidenced by a plethora of sonorities steeped in retro-futurist electro-romanticism. While noting that there are many others who do this, and a good many better than Zavriev, it should also be remarked that Rocket Mind is sufficiently well-tooled of its type to make it more than worthwhile for those that dig that big synthy beat. Joseph Auer’s Vhast opens in signature style with his customary Detroit-flavoured vibes, all silver-lined clouds of synth-float heaven propelled by a deliberate kickdrum into a thumping stomp. The set then takes a slight detour from the expected path into a sixteen-minute opus of beat-depeleted ambient, whose softly padded layers of dreamy drift and shimmer are only prevented from inducing total horizontality by the kinetics of its periodic syn-bass prods and squelchy metal-edged patter; the latter half sees a quasi-Global Communications use of keyboard hinting at a vocal-inflected melody which is never unfurled into full thematic statement. Partially successful, if only for its enhancement of the full impact of the Return of the Thump, as subsequent tracks find Auer enfolding us once more with his favoured Detroit-made comforter, a mix of downtempo techno with deep bass burble, drizzled with uber-cool deep house-influenced keys. Overall, there’s just enough tweaking of familiar formula to earn Vhast a merit. Quosp is the chosen moniker of callow Colin Kay, and his Soundscapes I is a precocious set of ambient celestiality replete with enough dream device to put stars on your lid. The disc assembles selections from previous digi-EPs together with four previously unreleased tracks. In places it patches into the synth-mediated sub-orchestrality of Eno’s more harmonically resolved ambient pieces. In fact, parts sound more like the drawers of the later appropriators of the legacy of Blessed Brian’s spatial ambient being rummaged through. The beauteous “Bistre”, for example, could be a more mellifluous Milieu meeting a less careworn Basinski channeling one of Aphex’s sweeter SAWs. A thrumming fog of stringswell streams through the shadowier “Blue”, resembling more up-to-date post-orchestral touchstones, Celer, colluding with Prince of Kompakt Pop Ambient, Markus Guentner. “Beechwood”, meanwhile, is steeped in the same spirit of slowcore sacral minimalism by now the referential preserve of Stars of the Lid, while “Aqua” and “Night Coast” hover around a Discreet Music zone at the edges of Another Green World. A wholly successful assemblage. ALAN LOCKETT • www.u-cover.com |
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