After speaking Highly of Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm on my Track of the Week this week, a video of them making it came to my attention on youtube and shows the whole process of making the album over one night in Nils Frahms studio in Berlin.
It’s a great document to the album and well worth your time so I thought I should bring it to your attention as a special bonus for this week:
After listening to the EP “Loon” by Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm a few months ago and really enjoying the sparse soundscapes created by the experimental artists collaboration, I decided to dig deeper into some of their other works.
“Trance Frendz” came out this year and the sound of minimal organic instrumentation blended with strongly synthetic elements is still here, but this time with a stronger structure in terms of an album. The longer playtime allows them to create an overall mood that slowly shifts between the tracks which when played as a complete piece become more than the sum of their parts.
23:52 comes right in the middle of the “Trance Frendz” and provides this powerful, awe inspiring force that gives the album a sense of scope grander then the more insular music found on “Loon”.
Although fairly simple in structure the sound design is complex and rich and as the filters on the synth open they reveal more and more layers of design until the scale of the track reaches cosmic levels. Simple yet incredibly powerful work from two artists who are quickly becoming some of my favourites working in electronic music today:
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Ash Koosha creates experimental electronica that’s sporadic and expressive in weird and wonderful ways. His New Album “I AKA I” feels a little more structured than his previous works but it still has these beautifully lush textures arranged and composed in ways that are both unexpected and exiting.
Feather feels as if the synth sounds of the history of video game music were turned into a freestyle collage of instrumentation. Starting with these garish yet uplifting FM Synth faux brass sounds before quickly diving into a the depths of dark rhythmic percussion and bass highlighted with piercing bleeps and bloops.
Although almost the antithesis of improvisational jazz in tone these electronic interments remind me of the organic structures of that genre as the sounds adjust in tempo and structure to find space for other elements in the piece. It creates a barrage of sound that I have found captivating on many listens:
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Melt-Banana have a take on noise rock that could only come out of Japan. Frantic fast paced guitar is looped and slammed through effects by Ichirou Agata to create massive soundscapes for Yasuko Onuki to shout over. These soundscapes shift around in unexpected ways that keep the listener constantly guessing.
The Hive is a perfect example. The track starts frenetic and thrashy but towards the end more effects and loops over the guitar add some order to the chaos. Shifting the track into sounds reminiscent of electronic genre.
If you want some music to pick you up by the scruff of the neck and shake some life into you this could well be it. Melt-Banana offer a refreshing take on the noise rock sound that’s clearly influenced by the their culture and musical proficiency.
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Anna Merediths album varmints has a lovely collection of songs that blend both classical and electrical instruments in novel ways. Blackfriars Is a piece for strings that repeats and drifts around creating a beautiful and distinct atmosphere with a constant clicking rhythm from a metronome as its sole percussion:
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Ultimate Care II is a really interesting album. A single piece of music made from the recordings of a washing machine. This may seem a little avant-garde for most people but trust me they manage to pull of the miraculous and make something so unique also highly assessable.
Although one long track, the album is split into excerpts and ends on a powerful high with Excerpt Nine my track of the week. Sounds from this washing machine are expertly cut and moulded to make brilliantly well structured persuasive sections that are constantly evolving and jumping around the stereo field with a real drive. Matmos turn these unique samples into great modern dance music because of skilled design. You won’t hear percussion programmed so well on many modern dance music and its this programming prowess that makes the album as catchy as it is:
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EPs seem to have highlighted the best music of this year, giving artists a place to develop on a collection of ideas that work as a whole whilst also being strong individually.
SBTRKTs New EP “SAVE YOURSELF” is a perfect example of this, a strong collection of tracks that work as a part of a whole without any filler. The EP opens with “GEMINI” a mood piece that introduces us to the pallet of sounds and the feeling of the EP before we really get rolling with my track of the week “GOOD MORNING”.
Sampled Brass sounds lead this track, they call out for strong percussion but this is kept to a minimum until the last third of the track. Stripping away the drums and bass of a track is something that is currently popular in many genre of Dance music. It allows the midrange details to shine through which are really well constructed in this instance where nice synth and vocal gestures provide interweaving melodies with the main Brass samples.
When the Drums and Bass hit they really drive the track providing the power that we expect from EDM however they are brief, covering only 8 bars of the whole track. The scarcity of the drum line is something I remember from several other tracks including crystal castles “fainting spells”. On repeat listens the piece becomes all anticipation, a continuing build for its conclusion. I find this highly compelling although I could see others viewing it as slightly frustrating. Taking away the club from the music in exchange for something more suited for the EP.
These newer forms of arrangement are pushing the many genres associated with electronic music forward in ways that break out of what would be a traditional club track. I think this is partly a response to modern technology. As DJ software and hardware gets more advanced allowing skilled users to loop segments of many tracks to create something new. DJs are no loner cross fading one track into the other. Instead they build their sets by taking small loops and sections of tracks to make them suitable for the club.
In turn producers no longer need to make tracks that suit the club in their entirety. They can try new styles of arrangement and yet still get sampled, clipped up and played in the club environment. GOOD MORNING fits this style, developing SBTRKTs sound in a new direction whilst keeping his high production standards:
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I have been listening to quite a few seminal and classic albums over the past few weeks and Remain In Light by Talking Heads is undoubtedly one of these.
The album features a lot of rhythmic patterns that loop and create atmospheres that are all engulfing and Listening Wind is no exception.
This repetition starts to become trancelike and in the entirety of the album you can really zone out until it becomes almost meditative. Out of context Listening Wind becomes slightly less effective however put this track on repeat and by the second listen you are in the right mindset to truly get into it or just listen to the whole album, it really is fantastic:
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