Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country

Tim Hecker is an ambient composer from Montreal, Canada and An Imaginary Country is his sixth studio album. Arguably one of his more accessible albums, this one's nonetheless a good indicator how to compose ambient-music that is more than a dull wall paper, something that absorbs the listener. Like Fennesz, one can detect the integration of noisy surface and melodic undercurrents. Unlike him, Hecker does not submerge the melodic elements under the noise, but allows the white noise to float above them, like nebula. The listener perceives the textures created by mellotrons, synthesizers and occasionally guitar and piano as well, as nebulous and hazy. The result bears some affinity to what shoegazers have achieved, but firmly in ambient vein. The album opener "100 Years Ago" and the album closer "200 Years Ago" contain a theme based on dramatic and memorable mellotron line that gives the album a bookend effect. Between the bookends there are ten more compositions that are good examples of the best sort of ambient-noise music.

Pluramon - The Monstrous Surplus

Pluramon is one of the many projects of German composer, electronic musician and producer Markus Schmickler, that has been active already since the nineties. The project that originally performed instrumental post-rock and whose early records featured none other than the legendary Jaki Liebezeit himself on drums, shifted direction into My Bloody Valentine influenced dream pop on the third album Dreams Top Rock. At the time when several electronic artists (M83, Ulrich Schnauss et al) adapted the haziness of textures as was the wont of shoegaze, such step seemed logical. On this album called The Monstrous Surplus the pop melodicism is at the fore as much as the druggy wall of sound from guitars and synths. Ergo, Pluramon has become a vehicle for the poppier ideas of Schmickler.

As on the previous album, American actress/vocalist Julee Cruise (of Twin Peaks fame) can be heard on vocals. Two additional female vocalists are also employed. Occasionally Schmickler himself sings too. Even though there's little that is strikingly new musically, The Monstrous Surplus nonetheless boosts an intimate, though often bleak ("Fresh Aufhebung") atmosphere and occasionally a memorable melody ("Turn In") that makes it a worthwhile listening.

Mercury Rev - Snowflake Midnight

Even though the seventh studio album by Mercury Rev called Snowflake Midnight does not shine as much as the first four albums, it is nonetheless a significant improvement over dull and toothless Secret Migration (2005). I was afraid of hearing signs of serious stagnation, but the new album sounds surprisingly well. It's been quite a while since Rev last retooled their sound. Here Rev relies on electronics. While such move of combining electronica with rock is not really innovative and some of the synth sounds border slightly on new-age, the result is still quite potent. Rev hasn't sounded this vital or bold for ages. There is less orchestral instrumentation on this album and Jonathan Donahue's voice sounds more natural, relying less on cloying falsetto and occasionally even going lower in terms of notes. Occasionally the psychedelic wall of sound rears its head, hinting a bit at the early Rev, but it's more polished and more reminiscent of the sonic language as heard on Blonde Redhead's 23. Standout track "Senses on Fire" is a good example of a polished noise pop driven by motorik krautrock pulse. Not a classic album, but nonetheless the boldest and most exploratory since the underrated See You On the Other Side.

Matmos - Supreme Balloon

Matmos - an electronic duo hailing from San Francisco - whose trademark is the treatment and integration of sundry unconventional samples and field recordings into their experimentalist glitch-techno compositions, have abandoned the practice of recording all sorts of sounds via microphone and sampling them on their seventh album titled Supreme Balloon. Instead, the duo comprising of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel rely on various analog synthesizers such as Arp, Roland, Korg, Moog and Waldorf. Therefore, Supreme Balloon is by no means a traditional album from Matmos, but in terms of playfulness and composition of sounds (this time, analog synths) it compares well to Matmos' best work. In "Mister Mouth" Marshall Allen from Sun Ra sits in on EVI (electronic valve instrument, a midi controller based on trumpet, similar to the EWI which is based on saxophone). The title track lasts for 24 minutes and confirms just how influential the under-rated Krautrockers Cluster were (and are) to a lot of contemporary electronic experimentalists. Supreme Balloon is a Matmos album that shows the duo's warmer, more melodic and even a more improvisational side.

*This review was published in Estonian in a journal called Postimees. This is the English translation

The Chap - Mega Breakfast

Third album by the London quintet The Chap, Mega Breakfast, contains a single that proves the possibility of a strings-driven indie rock to sound, as the title implies, fun and interesting! Not just deliver the last one at best. There's no Arcade Fire type somberness and po-faced drear to be found on "Fun and Interesting". Overall The Chap performs dance-oriented indie rock that distinguishes itself from other fare by multilayered arrangements, strong sense of melody as well as dadaist humor and attitude. And then there are choral arrangements! All five members (some of them multi-instrumentalists) sing and when they belt out vocals together, they sound very choral. Vocals, instrumentation, grooves and humorous lyrics result in a record that makes all other indie/dance efforts seem stale by comparison. A truly talented band from whom you'll no doubt hear more about.

*This review was published in Estonian in a journal called Postimees. This is the English translation

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

French indietronica artist M83, that originally was a duo, but was reduced to one-man project of Anthony Gonzalez in 2005, flirts with synth pop and new-wave influences on the fourth album Saturdays = Youth. Compared to early records that focused on instrumental textures and melodramatic atmosphere, Saturdays is more song-oriented. The album even features input from a female vocalist with a voice very much akin to Kate Bush. In terms of mood and music the album is filled with nostalgia as it's a throwback to the artist's youth that he remembers brightly. The album is well realized, as M83 has managed to adopt the trademark 80s synth and drum sounds into his own style without sounding banal or tasteless. Gonzalez has aimed at more focused songwriting and sometimes the results yield a few melodic gems (like "Up"). Gonzales however does have room for development in terms of conventional songwriting. He's still impeccable at establishing the mood and atmosphere, as proved by the standout track "Couleurs".

*This review was published in Estonian in a journal called Postimees. This is the English translation

Kraftwerk - Autobahn

Autobahn was Kraftwerk's breakthrough album, and also the revolutionary one. Although arguably Neu or even Can could be the first pioneers in the field of hypnotic motorik minimalist drive, Kraftwerk converted the style they had established to a more electronic and exclusively synthesizer-based robotic pulse. With this, the transition from rock and modern electronic pop was complete. Its infamous title track "Autobahn", lasting nearly 23 minutes, also differs from other classic 10-20 minute Krautrock epics that are very mantra-like in nature and run with repetition, by being very multi-sectioned but the sections are very similar in their mesmerizing quality. Two-part "Kometenmelodie", first part being slow and dark, the second one being more uptempo, is also an impeccable showcase for their classic sound.

All the same, Autobahn is still a transitional effort - from that point on their music became robotic and synthesizer-based, but a few spots still feature guitar, flute or even a little spooky dissonant violin freak-out on the sinister "Mitternacht". And the album closer, the serene "Morgenspaziergang" sounds surprisingly acoustic and human. It is also the closest thing to Kraftwerk's pre-Autobahn material, it would've fit perfectly on Ralf and Florian. Part of this record's appeal is that while their classic robotic style has reared its head here full blown, there are occasional elements and non-electronic instrumentation still harking back to Kraftwerk's initial art-rock phase. Autobahn is groundbreaking and innovative without being a demanding listen as was the case with 1970-73 albums, as well as presenting their trademark Teutonic android futurism that isn't as overtly cold or detached as on subsequent Kraftwerk discography.

Stereolab - Dots and Loops (1997)

Dots and Loops, as produced for the most part by John McEntire of Tortoise fame, assisted by Mouse on Mars on a couple of tunes, is a more electronic sounding Stereolab album, and nowhere near as Kraut-rocking as the previous albums had been. Instead, there's a lot of jazz and funk flavor to a lot of these tunes. Horn and string arrangement crop up in lieu of guitars, which are relegated to the background, keyboards are even more on the foreground and a lot of electronic percussion either complements or replaces the drums, depending on a song. It's hard to believe Stereolab was still a rock band an album ago. "Refractions In The Plastic Pulse" is a highlight with its multiple section epic, as is "Contronatura" on a slightly smaller scale, but "Prisoner Of Mars" on the other hand is a drab attempt at loungy trip-hop and "Parsec" is essentially pseudo-jazz "spiced up" with bland and dated drum&bass styled percussion. Elsewhere, "Miss Modular", "Flower Called Nowhere" and "Ticker Tape of the Unconscious" are memorable songs with layered instrumentation and laid back melodies that sound even lusher, if also a bit too polished than Stereolab's earlier lounge gems, whereas "Diagonals" is essentially a rather flaccid pseudo-jazz version of "Metronomic Underground".

Nonetheless, this record brought both new fans to the band as well as turning off some of the older ones who were more in tune with the band's Kraut-rock side. Whatever a listener thinks of this album depends largely on ones predilection towards electronic music as well as jazz and lounge oriented music. Just as there's good and bad in absolutely every style of music, so is Dots and Loops made up of either hits or misses in the styles pursued here. The production on this record is excellent and pristine, as John McEntire is one of the most accomplished producers and record engineers in experimental music, even if Dots and Loops is one of the few Stereolab albums that explicitly sounds like a nineties product, this coming from a band otherwise known for combining sounds and styles into timeless amalgams.

Tangerine Dream - Zeit

Zeit was the first album of full-blown ambient music without any recognizable rock elements from the German space music pioneers Tangerine Dream. The band's fan base is divided on this one. The most favorable reviews for this album declare that this sounds nothing like the watered-down new-age infused synthetic muzak TD apparently degenerated into at the eighties and instead is an uncompromising, trippy headphone experience. While i agree with them to an extent, the album also is a bit overblown in its 4 sidelong tracks on 2 LPs (Soft Machine pulled off a better result in this format with their third record). As such, it is clearly demanding on the listener. The detractors write Zeit off as a total snorefest. While this is short-sighted, it would've been a masterpiece if some of the cuts would've been reduced in length. This album has plenty of interesting sonorities and effects, but it is hard to listen to the 75 minutes of it in one sitting. Moreover, the album is so sinister that it sounds very frightening. The compositions are not only slow, but completely dirge-like. Listening to this one many times might induce feelings of fear in the dark or even make one have nightmares, worse still.

The most remarkable piece is "Birth of Liquid Plejades" which is a three-part epic of quintessential proto-illbient music. Here TD utilizes the A-minor key in a nightmarish way, beginning with sinister cellos droning, creating a dreary, yet intense soundscape, segueing into a calmer section where Popol Vuh's Florian Fricke (who was one of the first Krautrock musicians to own a big Moog at that time) plays his plaintive solo on Moog, and the final section consists mainly of Pink Floyd-like pulsating organ played by ex-member Steve Shroyder. Other pieces have their moments, but one gets the feeling they messed around with all sorts of weird spacious sounds mainly because they could, the title track being the most blatant example.

Whether this is psychedelic head trip gone wrong; or self-indulgent doodling, one thing is clear. TD was yet to find their unique sound. But they were half-way there. They had got rid of their rock trappings, at this point it was a matter of time and a couple of albums before the vision of TD would materialize into something more identifiable and cohesive.

Fennesz - Endless Summer

A common criticism to the music that may not appear blatantly song-oriented sounds like: "That's not music, that's just noise". Such a simple dichotomy serves to arbitrarily divide everything to palatable and unpalatable collection of sounds. I think it's a shame, because there's a whole big universe between listenability and unlistenability, accessibility and inaccessibility. Moreover, noise can be musical as well. Anyone can take a laptop, a fancy FX-processor, maybe an instrument (most likely guitar or synthesizer) and make weird sounds with it all. It takes a real compositional talent to organize sounds in a manner that sounds musical and has purpose or direction. Laptop musician Christian Fennesz certainly excels at making melodic compositions out of tricky sound manipulations and various odd micro-glitches. Melodic elements you'd otherwise expect to be on display in conventional song structures appear buried in the warbly, gurgling and buzzing sand. The eight minute title track is clearly a guitar based composition, yet the guitars in this song are mangled, downsampled, altered past the usual recognition. Likewise, "Before I Leave" uses micro-sound sampling and editing techniques to create a chord progression of usually seventh-chords. Fennesz even offers his own twist on the kind of music that already suspended with traditional songwriting approach: "Happy Audio" is a gradually evolving, buzzing, hypnotic 11 minute piece that sounds like a microsound take on Kraut-rock a la Neu! or Harmonia.

What makes this record so oddly compelling is that despite the abrasive frontier, the undercurrent is made up of warm and inviting harmonies, that evoke summer-like moods. As such, "Endless Summer" serves as an excellent treatise on contrast and contradictory juxtaposition between the harsh exterior and the beautiful interior.

Caribou - Andorra

Canadian Dan Snaith's one-man project, originally known as Manitoba, but later renamed as Caribou after Snaith was threatened with a law-suit; has been one of the most remarkable indietronic acts of the current decade. Fusing the psychedelic spirit of the sixties with the technological possibilities of electronica, multi-instrumentalist and laptop-musician Snaith has created the kind of human electronica, that can be as mind-bending and colorful as the vintage psych rock from several decades ago. While the work of Manitoba/Caribou (or Caritoba, if you will) can be traced to certain influences like Silver Apples, Neu! or the Byrds, it is safe to say that Dan Snaith does possess a signature sound.

On the new album, titled Andorra, his signature sound is even more refined than ever, also more accessible with clearly discernible pop influences. The opener "Melody Day", also released as a single, is worth its title for its melodic and sunny approach, being one of the memorable songs in Snaith's canon. Sounds and textures still make up a multi-faceted and multi-layered blend, but it all sounds more live than ever, even in the case of sampled instruments. Percussive attack, another aspect defining the Caribou sound, is also more focused. "Andorra" on the whole is musically more cohesive of an effort than the more abstract and meandering previous album "The Milk Of Human Kindness".

*This review was published today in an Estonian journal called Eesti Ekspress. This is the English translation.