Minimalism is a four letter word

I have an unfortunate habit regarding music and other people, in which I am frequently given over to giving friends and passers-by the impression that I am just phenomenally into certain genres or bands or stuff that I'm not actually into to such an unusual degree. This is a secondary effect of my tendency to foam at the mouth whenever anyone expresses even the slightest interest in hearing what I have to say about tunes in general. If you've not personally witnessed this phenomenon, ask me to recommend some bands some time. Bring a towel.

Case in point, I've accidentally given my friends the impression that I really, really like minimalist electronica, which sounds a lot like I'm really, really into obscure czechoslovakian art films. Unappetizing and pretentious as hell. I really must break myself of the indie kid impulse to constantly whip out the most obscure aspect of whatever I'm listening to as soon as I'm prompted to even think about music. It's unhealthy.

Of course, I bring up odd genres in these circumstances because I do discover the most unlikely gems from time to time.



I was pointed toward German artist Pantha Du Prince's This Bliss, as I often am, by CMG's year-end top 50 list. I respect the publication, and their placing of an electronica album so high on such a list seemed incredibly out of character: the genre is simply not one that's typically considered compelling, or really anything at all beyond beautiful vapor. It's most often the place where I go to lose track of time, in the dark, at strange hours of the day, when paying attention is not preferred nor desired.

I won't claim an understanding of what makes a work of music "minimalist", if anything the music sounds complex and lush enough to shame many an album I've heard deemed "lush" and also "complex". I'll just maintain what's been applied to it as a work of art, in the interest of preserving the vernacular and not angering whatever gods might be checking on me. This Bliss is absolutely arresting.

Album opener Asha is as unassuming and attention-grabbing a mission statement as he's-the-whole-band-man Henrik Weber could hope for, wedding a glittering synth melody to a deep and dark 4/4 drum beat that builds itself slowly without losing any momentum. Weber's preferred synth voices tend to fall somewhere between plucky 80's new wave faux-piano and utterly modern xyolophonic resonance. The result is hypnotically alien and gorgeous to hear, and it speaks volumes about the artist's confidence in and love for his chosen medium. This is electronica fulfilling its boundless promise without any creedance given to haters. And oh, there will be haters.

Saturn Strobe pushes the album further, sinking a melancholy string refrain beneath the pound-click-snap charisma of a club-viable drum line. The sound is about as close to organic as I've heard electronica come to, something undoubtedly artificial to the ear that yet manages to achieve a warmth and grandeur somewhere within its swells. Weber knows how to program a tambourine crash that sounds like it's being struck with a goddamn whip: it's a sound he returns to often and one which brings a scintillating, skittering violence to his songs such that the pace never sags. The man is out to make your blood pump without resorting to hackneyed tricks or soggy house stylings. It makes the difference between a beautiful idea and an execution that'll hook itself into your bloodstream without mercy.

And it's a good thing the artist can do this, because these are long tracks, two of them extending past the ten minute mark, which don't so much progress as oscillate. Weber explores a broad expanse of jet black themes on This Bliss, without benefitting from words or clear borders, save for the omnipresent sharpness of the drum program. Late album highlight Florac veers close to shiningly obsidian dance floor bombast as it processes a resonant synth ode to pizzicato over and over again, but reins itself in repeatedly before it can boil over. The restraint that can be felt when the drums' pounding woodblock and precision cymbal tirade are hushed is magnetic, it presses the listener against the beating synthesized heart of the song and exults in its power to do so.

Penultimate track Steiner Im Fug and closer Seeds of Sleep enunciate the dual obsessions Pantha Du Prince seems to build This Bliss around, the former welding the slow turbulence of a downtuned bass to the prickly sensation of ecsatic techno embellishments, the latter lifting ghostly, vaguely symphonic synth voices into deep space powered only by the mesmerizing measures of an impeccable kick drum. This last track is particularly astonishing, something that wouldn't sound out of place on a post-rock record or as the last track of an art rock band's album, the kind of music less capable musicians would tack on thoughtlessly as the means to assure themselves that they are just totally out there, in the ether man.

The trick is, This Bliss is utterly guiltless, it holds the sincerity and potential of the genre as conviction without apology and delivers upon such promise. It's the kind of thing that provokes young boys to lavish adverbs all over their attempts to encapsulate what it does, and defies expectations with staunchly reserved guile.

And in case you were curious, that Stars of the Lid album is about the goddamned prettiest minimalist thing I've ever heard, and it's also something I think they could put in space ships in lieu of those freezing chambers you see in umpteen sci-fi flicks. It puts you to sleep with a power that is not so much grand as it is unnerving.

So, does anyone even make post-rock anymore? Now throwing that fucking phrase around will earn you a proper ass-kicking!

Beep

In the interest of rampant fanboyism, check me out.

The critical information I'm struggling vaguely to convey to you is that I'm not only an online friend to Subtle mastersmith and sincere musical hero Dax Pierson, I am also amongst the company of his top three closest musical neighbours.

Ipso facto, I am in essence the newest member of Subtle and I am to depart from this harsh locale for the sunny shores of Vancouver, there to weave hushed and terrible secrets into music with my new best friends and hangers-on.

The Ends

It begins with all white, in a sound-proofed hallway,
your staring down the empty eye slits of a lowsocket,
waking on the floor at the foot of the bright light,
blocking and locked hundredth door of luck.

At the opposite end of the hall sits a pair of empty pay public binoculars,
slumped, facing your way.

In the dead of their stare you marvel about,
until you eye this one door that appears to be both half open and closed.
and are drawn moth to the bulb,
head down, as if reeled round a gear by the guts,
inching toward your intuit-picked portal of choice.

Now knelt, yet not without nerves in this moment of mostly glory,
you look for the knob, and see nothing but healed shut keyhole.

Dax-strong in this dream you begin to cut key,
in the furthest corner of a clearest skull,
when you feel your kneecaps being nursed by a white on white welcome mat.
you tilt your skull to read "WOE-BE-GONE"
only written wrong or in mirror.

Your hands and heart full of edge, you lift the mat gently,
and there beneath it's omen embroidered,
sits an intact wishingbone.

You carefully lift your instrument of certain luck to the door,
and it slowly unclenches the scar seem set where it's keyhole would be,
and so you snap bliss bone, cut wish and begin to lock pick.

Until you hear through the thick of the door the deadbolt caughing loose.

Suddenly the fear black above your skull,
beneath your skin goes wild,
as the door of your choice opens itself slowly,
sealing off your face with perfect stripes of rising bone and angst,
of alabaster and pit,
allowing the bright right light of luck
to completely believe
and eclipse you.

Now Get Back To Work

Does anyone else remember those eight seconds back in 2002 when Interpol were going to revolutionize rock music and everyone was using the term "electroclash" like it actually meant something? Halcyon days were they.

I bring this up not to spite those fine young gentlemen out of NYC but as a sincere invocation of bafflement as Our Love To Admire spins before me: bafflement over scene, taste, and the great ambling amnesiac mob that the internet, may it live forever, has gifted unto our generation. Or made our generation into. Or something.

To wit, Interpol has for the second time - zing, motherfuckers - released a tight, gorgeously orchestrated record of honest to goodness rock music, and at the same time they've released something that is going to be ignored, chewed out, defecated on, and generally loathed by the people it was made for a priori, solely on the strength of its progenitors. It's not something any reasonably enabled Interpol fan didn't see coming miles off, the machinations of indie rock critics and fans, if that delineation means anything, very often possessing all the unpredictable grace of zeppelins locked in their elephantine maneuvers, but it's still a genuine shame.

I won't pretend I wasn't right in that bristling phalanx of smarm myself, awaiting Paul Banks and Company's inevitable crash upon our invulnerable wall of sharp taste and pious scoffing, but I'm beat and perfectly willing to admit being taken at an unexpected angle.

Our Love To Admire is a great album, a cohesive and attractive amalgamation of good songs which confidently tread the uncomfortable gap between 2002's infallible gothic Turn on the Bright Lights and 2004's awkwardly upbeat Antics. The production, which utterly failed to capture Interpol's myriad strengths through virtually all of Antics, represents a triumphant resurrection of Turn on the Bright Lights's gotham city poem sensibilities. The tones are resonant, deep, and dark - precisely the aesthetic Interpol needed to perfect. Banks's songwriting retains much of the ineffable cheese it did since he fumbled through "I submit my incentive is romance", but herein his trademark baritone, the whole vibrant sound of it, succeeds gorgeously on its undeniable instrumental quality. Delivered without a hint of self-consciousness or ego, Banks is hypnotic at his weakest and indie rock's magna cumme laude at his best. Even better, the frontman has found a comfortable niche serving as instrument, his greatest strength, and less of a persona, Interpol's greatest distraction, and instead leaving room for the band's always scintillating guitar tones to paint the real textures on these eleven songs. It's refreshing and immediately powerful to hear Banks and Daniel Kessler's signature guitar downstrokes let loose to meander and glow like they did on Bright Lights, notes too often crowded out or hurried in hopeless search for dance rock poignancy last time around.

The downside is we receive no haunting lyricism to match "I'm going to hold your face / and toast the snow that fell", the tradeoff being that we can take this band seriously again. Fair enough, I say.

The rhythm section of Carlos Denglar and Sam Fogarino, for the most part, embrace Banks's instrumentalized voice as a vital rhythmic device, raising songs like Wrecking Ball from enjoyable tonal romps to truly visceral rock gems. This beautiful interplay of musicians, this real sincerity and fusion of endlessly talented individuals, combined with the band's never ending noodling with synthetic effects and a newfound love of more earthly orchestration - the band finally discovered the piano for god's sake - come together incredibly well, very clearly the result of carefully focused skill but producing a record affording listeners so much more than Just Another Album.

The author is far too cool and surprised to dissect individual tracks. He's working on something else, but he can't remember where he left it.

They're fighting for what?

Trying to explain the Beastie Boys to my father was the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. This conversation did not so much teeter on as plunge headfirst into the unkind maw of the generation gap, and neither of us made it out with any sort of sensical conclusion. What do I tell him?

It's like trying to explain what a clown is. Yes, they do know they look like that, and it's.. it is meant to be funny, but no it's not really that funny and... goddamnit they're the Beastie Boys. Fuck!