Category Archives: On record

Switched On – Caribou: Suddenly (City Slang)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Suddenly may well be an ironic title, given that it marks the reappearance of Caribou as a long playing solo artist for the first time in five years. The artist – aka Dan Snaith – has bewitched us with a number of solo albums blending instrumental electronica and a warm vocal. The last two under the pseudonym of Caribou – Swim and Our Love – were also released at an interval of half a decade, suggesting Snaith has a relaxed rhythm about his music.

What’s the music like?

There is a lot going on in the twelve tracks of Suddenly. Snaith loves to write layers in to his music, so that even the vocal tracks have a collage of instrumental riffs and colours backing them up. A lot of love and care has clearly gone into them, and a good deal of soul shows through too, Snaith coming across as a warm-hearted writer generous with his riffs and hooks. There are deep personal references, too, with Snaith’s mother appearing briefly on the opening Sister.

On occasion, however, he can be too generous. Some of the tracks start to get going but get chopped up and don’t get a chance to fully flex their muscles. It is possible that Snaith has included too much from his reported 900 experimentations that led to the album, as though desperate to cram as much in as possible. There are moments of real beauty in tracks such as Sunny’s Time, with the freedom of its meandering piano, or New Jade with its dappled textures, but they prove fleeting rather than constant.

Never Come Back is a definite exception, a warm and heartening synth-driven piece of positive energy, up there with Caribou’s best tracks. Ravi is up there too, as calming as the blue cover, while there are soft, rounded vocals with a rueful edge on Like I Loved You.

Does it all work?

See above. When Caribou nails a good track it certainly stays nailed – but on occasion there is a bit too much going on. The feeling persists that some of the more driven beats –  Ravi or Never Come Back for instance are where we see some real punch to the rhythms.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Even on an album that proves a little frustrating it is impossible not to be impressed or moved with what Caribou can achieve. He is a fine producer of some very optimistic and affirming music. Fans will lap it up for sure – but newcomers might be better directed to some of the albums further back in the canon.

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You can buy Suddenly from the Bandcamp website here

Switched On – The Heliocentrics: Infinity of Now (Madlib Invazion)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The Heliocentrics are musical chameleons in the best sense. The UK-based duo of Malcolm Catto and Jake Ferguson speak an international language, often flavouring their music with funk, deep jazz, psychedelia or hip hop – but never really settling for long enough to pin them down. Their refreshingly open and boundary-free approach to music has already led to highly rewarding collaborations with Mulatu Astatke, Lloyd Miller, Orlando Julius and Melvin Van Peebles, all completed since debut album Out There was released in 2007.

While there will no doubt be more working in tandem, Infinity Of Now is The Heliocentrics’ first album for three years, released on celebrated producer Madlib’s label.

What’s the music like?

In a word, brilliant. Infinity Of Now is The Heliocentrics going back to their first principles, with a richly rewarding melting pot of instrumental and vocal winners, bringing a good deal of funk into an already colourful mix. This is the sort of music the group can make instinctively but they do it so well that there could never be any accusations of musical laziness. Put simply, the pair have just the right instincts to make our heads nod, our feet move and our horizons widen a little.

To take examples, the descriptive Elephant Walk uses loping bass and braying saxophone to describe its subject, satisfying both casual listeners and those who like their funk with a bit more experimentation. There are parallels to ensemble jazz groups such as Sun Ra but also 1970s detective theme tunes, all stirred in to the stew.

The single Burning Wooden Ship is equally fine, a bright flame alight with a vivid rhythm track, while by contrast the bluesy Hanging By A Thread is led by cool organ and rasping saxophone. 99% Revolution is a great vocal track with which to start, establishing the album’s lively groove, while Light In The Dark has a lovely grainy breakbeat supporting dreamy vocals and a more exotic musical language. Its Eastern flavours could easily have rendered this as music from the 1970s yet it still sounds forward thinking.

Does it all work?

Yes. The only regret is that there are not more than eight tracks, such is the richness of Catto and Ferguson’s invention. What remains is highly concentrated and musically stimulating, and repeated listening to the album brings out more of its colour and ideas. The only regret is that the vocalists appear not to be mentioned anywhere.

Is it recommended?

Without question. The Heliocentrics have always been musical stimulators, and Infinity Of Now adds another link in that particular chain. It finds them on fine form, displaying equal parts funk, invention, experimentation and a dash of humour. More power to their funky elbows!

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Switched On – Emika: Klavirni Temna (Emika Records)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Emika made her first volume of piano recordings available five years ago. The approach was straightforward, the aim of Klavirni to record instinctive and intimate thoughts on the piano and release them to a music-buying public, who greatly appreciated the headspace they provided. From the first collection, Dilo 7 remains Emika’s biggest track on Spotify, with more than 15 million streams.

Since then she has written a first symphony (Melanfonie) and added to a  flourishing output of electronic music. Yet the piano remains her most private form of expression, and five years on, she revisits it on record.

On Klavirni Temna we find an artist whose life has changed a great deal, with motherhood and relocation to a self-sustaining studio outside of Berlin just two of the biggest life changes. However she continues to find solace and inspiration from solo sessions at the keyboard.

What’s the music like?

Klavirni was released before peaceful piano playlists became a thing. With its sequel, the danger was that Emika would be making music that might be seen as derivative.

She cleverly sidesteps that possibility by delivering deeply felt thoughts on the piano that go through electronic studio trickery before reaching the listener, the purity of the sound effectively destroyed by extraneous glitches and pitch wobbles. In spite of this treatment they still reach the parts other solo piano records don’t, calming the mind with their direct musical language.

Once again Emika’s medium of communication is ‘Dilo’, the Czech word for ‘moment’, giving her the freedom to emulate fellow compatriots Dvořák, Janáček and Suk in writing sketches and character pieces for the piano.

There are passing similarities in figuration between Emika’s work and the shorter pieces of Erik Satie, the Preludes of Chopin, or the Metamorphosis works of Philip Glass, but ultimately her personality shines through. Most of the pieces are around three minutes, each acting as a concentrated musical postcard.

Dilo 21 begins at an easy walking pace but is deeply expressive, thanks in part to a vibrato applied to the piano sound. Its block chords have a gorgeous mottled sound, as though we were listening to someone playing the piano in the room next door.

This is a level of intimacy maintained throughout Klavirni Temna, where private thoughts are communicated directly to the listener. Dilo 22 flickers in the half-light like a resilient candle, finding greater brightness by shifting effortlessly into the major key halfway through. Dilo 23 is more propulsive, showing energy can still be found in this stripped back form of music.

On occasion the aural perspective shifts. Dilo 29 is airborne, with a touchingly sad melody of childlike simplicity. Dilo 26 shares that feeling of suspension in the sky, its higher arpeggios complementing an arching melody from the piano’s left hand. Most striking of all is Dilo 31, where the bottom literally falls out of the piano. As the piece progresses the pitch steadily drops, like a wind-up toy running out of power, until it sinks to the ground, helpless.

As the collection progresses the studio involvement intensifies. Penultimate piece Dilo 33 feels more physical but muffled too, the wall between listener and performer thicker than previously – a feeling reinforced by the flickering figures of Dilo 34, beautiful but otherworldly. These figures are eaten up, the destruction wrought by the studio now complete, leaving behind only static noise.

Does it all work?

Yes. It is a lot harder than you might think to write simple structures for piano that also carry emotional meaning, but Emika achieves that feat throughout Klavirni Temna. The electronic manipulations are both clever and sensitive, refracting the sound through improbable prisms but never distorting them to the point where it becomes illegible.
It helps to hear the physical process of playing the piano, too, the human elements brought to the fore.

Is it recommended?

Wholeheartedly. If you’re in need of time for contemplation, away from the relentless demands of technology, put this on. It really does calm and isolate the mind.

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Switched On – Three Rivers Project: Confluence (Lewis Recordings)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Three Rivers Project is an intriguing collaboration between DJ Yoda and his regular production partner Mark Ross, who records with Roland Faber as Go Atoms. They are named as guests on five of the tracks on debut album Confluence, which as Yoda admits is unlike anything he has worked on before.

The trio describe Confluence as a ‘soundtrack to an imaginary movie, combining the best elements of made-for-VHS electronica, 80s synth/cold wave, against the clock electro house, and the influence of John Carpenter, Jean Michel Jarre and DJ Hell.’ The introductory paragraph on Bandcamp goes on to speak of the album as ‘a classic in future/retro sounds and the accessibility of strange new worlds’. All of which points very heavily indeed towards the influence of cult 1980s throwback hit Stranger Things, the Netflix series notable for its brilliant analogue soundtrack and attention to recent historical detail of electronic music.

What’s the music like?

If you know Yoda as the source of some original, witty and tuneful hip hop, the sound of Confluence will come as a surprise – in a good way.

There is no doubt that the music for Stranger Things has played a big part in the formation of the album, but thankfully Confluence is more than a derivative imitation. The three protagonists are too inventive for that.

As a result we get a richly descriptive album that flows well and is very descriptive, with several tracks of standout musical beauty. Dawn Eclipse provides a wide open sonic panorama from the start, beautifully expansive and more than a bit mysterious. The broad canvas segues into next number Confluence A – Water Leaves, where big reverberant drums cut to a watery backdrop.

The Stranger Things parallels become more apparent as the album progresses. Osmosis could be an offcut from Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygène, while Dark Neon – which also features Go Atoms – has all the hallmarks of an extraterrestrial 1980s soundtrack, with burbling analogue synths and the weird contours of a main theme. So too does Colony, which pumps more energy into its beats, and Conurbation, a faster and nicely aligned imitation of early techno.

Wolfram accentuates the oddness, the sound of a moaning creature blended into some of Yoda’s typical scratching sounds, while Out Of The Blue is a pure drone.

These different elements provide the essential light and shade of Confluence, which ends with a cavernous beat applied to the resolution of Confluence C – Waters Reach.

Does it all work?

Yes, largely. The concept behind Three Waters Project may be almost wholly based on music from the recent past, but it is well executed and structured. With Yoda already a man of many styles, it follows that with Go Atoms he should be able to blend types of writing which are new to them – and sure enough they do so skillfully.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Confluence sounds great on headphones, and is ironically at its most effective when the drones come out and the atmospheric tracks are in play. Yet even the moments where pastiche is most obvious are full of good, strange, instrumental things.

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On record: Elizabeth Watts, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins – Vaughan Williams: A Pastoral Symphony & Symphony no.4

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Elizabeth Watts (soprano)*, David Butt Philip (tenor)**, BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins

Vaughan Williams
A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony no.3)* (1921)
Symphony no.4 in F minor** (1931-4)
Saraband, ‘Helen’ (1913-4)

Hyperion CDA68280 [80’57”]
English text included
Producer Andrew Keener
Engineer Simon Eadon

Recorded 26 & 27 November (Symphonies), 2 December 2018 (Helen), Watford Colosseum, UK

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra continue their cycle of the symphonies by Vaughan Williams with the Third and Fourth, two ostensibly very different pieces whose equally equivocal reception at their premieres now seems testament to their expressive reach.

What’s the music like?

No longer the relative rarity it once was, A Pastoral Symphony remains the most elusive of this cycle – its arcadian rapture shot-through with imagery of war and transience.

Brabbins sets a well-nigh ideal tempo for the opening movement, its deceptively passive interplay of landscape and evocation informed by eddying agitation made more explicit in its successor – whose distanced solos for horn and (offstage) trumpet afford concrete recollections of VW’s wartime experience, made the more poignant by being sensed on the edge of consciousness. For all its greater physicality, the third movement is no conventional scherzo in its eliding between moods with an agility finely conveyed here through Brabbins’s judicious pacing – not least that eerily flitting coda which forms an unerring transition to the finale. Its remote outer sections enhanced by Elizabeth Watts‘s yearning vocalise, this unfolds as a necessary culmination; the composer bringing to the fore emotions earlier half-glimpsed on the way to a powerfully wrought climax, leaving in its wake a catharsis more potent for its intangibility.

From here to the seismic eruption of the Fourth Symphony is to set forth on a very different journey, one of absolute expression in combat with force of circumstance. Brabbins keeps a firm yet flexible grip on the initial Allegro, its violent opening balanced by the fugitive calm into which it withdraws. He then finds the right ‘walking’ tempo for the Andante, this sombre if never featureless landscape underpinned by angular harmonic progressions that twice break out in ominous outbursts prior to the flute’s lamenting soliloquy towards its close. Perhaps the Scherzo’s outer sections could have evinced greater sardonic humour, though the overbearing pomposity of its trio is as finely judged as is the pulsating transition into the finale. Brabbins duly brings out its martial swagger and if tension during the earlier stages could be even more acute, the ghostly throwback at its centre yields a wan rapture and how persuasively he draws the thematic elements together in the epilogo fugato for a stretto of mounting tension whose denouement is a return to the work’s fateful opening gesture and a four-letter clinching chord.

As makeweight, Saraband ‘Helen’ proves an enticing discovery. Left unfinished towards the outbreak of the First World War, this setting of lines from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus may be off-balance in its utilizing tenor and chorus for what surely needed to become a larger entity, though both David Butt Philip and the BBC Symphony Chorus acquit themselves ably, while Brabbins secures playing of real elegance and finesse in orchestral writing that inadvertently yields what emerged as the main theme of Serenade to Music almost a quarter-century later.

Does it all work?

Almost entirely. Those who have acquired the earlier releases in this series (A Sea Symphony and A London Symphony) will be aware of the qualities which Brabbins brings to VW, and so it proves here with what is among the finest recent accounts of the Pastoral. Others have evinced a more visceral response in the Fourth, but there is no lack of impact – allied to a methodical sense of purpose that pays dividends in those densely contrapuntal passages over which the composer laboured before ultimately getting them right.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Sound has the sense of perspective but also immediacy necessary in this music, with Robert Matthew-Walker once again contributing a detailed and informative note. Hopefully the next instalment, featuring the Fifth (and Sixth?) Symphony, will not be long in coming.

For further information on this release, visit the Hyperion website, or the BBC Symphony Orchestra. You can also read Arcana’s interview with the conductor here