In all fairness, I should also warn you that you only get 37 minutes of music for your money on this album, but that shouldn’t stop you from buying it. In fact, nothing should stop you from buying it!

Buy Tangerine Dream – Phaedra @ Amazon

Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children

Sitting in my new bedroom as the remaining few hours of 2008 dwindle, I bring with it my final review of the year, I present you with Boards of Canada’s “Music Has The Right To Children”. BoC are a duo who use the warmest electronic equipment and make it nostalgic, the kind that sticks to your insides and heart. Although this particular album isn’t from 2008, I chose to review this, as it remains memorable with hints of new flavors every year I listen to it.

Eighteen rhythmic tracks all beat heavy and all uniquely satisfying. “Wildlife Analysis” is a song with an almost thin membrane, sounding like the beginning of a documentary (kind of BoCs thing, look into their use of old documentaries). Briefly subduing the listener to a world yet to come, the all seeing ominous kaleidoscopic track “An Eagle In Your Mind” has now made its way into your ears. Many tracks, such as the innocent “Sixtyten”, circle around a simple beat that swerves throughout the course of the song. Never do the tracks rely on repeats, but openly refer to them time and time again (as a source?). Spacey “Kaini Industries” in its short time morphs to a wooden sound, and leads to wondrous “Bocuma”. A song that feels like it’s exploring and tapping into what your mind conceives it to be. “Open the Light” sounds like a realization a new way.

Don’t be fooled by “Roygbiv” although it begins with a heavy sound it becomes fun and easy going. Same goes with “The Color of Fire”, a track that may disturb some and cater to others toddler days. This is an album best taken as a whole. A few tracks just don’t meet the minimum time standards to be played alone, and some just refuse to paint on others canvases (lets call these playlist?!).

My personal pick off this album is non other then “Turquoise Hexagon Sun”. A song to me that feels spectator like, and full of good times, yet splintered with regret. This track is an ambient wonder, you distinctly can tell what you’re hearing (pool balls shuffling about, distant questions, brief chatter), but never in pristine clarity. This leaves ones mind to `fill in the blanks’, as years pass the blanks are like a crossword puzzle for an elder. As their diction grows some blanks are near obvious yet they tinker for a deeper meaning.

What I hope you’ve gained so far ,from this review, is although beat heavy it has so much more to offer then the casual `chill’ albums. People are rottenly too critical on loops and miscellaneous things to really feel the album, just continue grading them on X (sound, originality, cleverness ooo extra points!!! Etc). This is an album that can be heard through your ears, eyes, and mind. First few listens may not seem like much but it engulfs you eventually in a land blurry but familiar and never the less comforting. Soar through the skies back to your first flight, or relive the fresh pine air of those mountain park trails. Even uncover some of your day to day doings in kindergarten. Those 10.A.M. bright blue skies, those old shows…This is nostalgia and this is why it’s never bad to relive it. Just reminiscing of it makes people smile, well how about musically absorbing it?

The last thing I’d like to talk about is the albums nostalgic properties. Many remember listening to an old Zeppelin album or Soundgarden mix tape, they remember where they were and yearn for those times again. This album stays current, you might get nostalgia from listening to this album years later, but not sitting in your room with headphones on (like with Zep), it offers a new chapter to recollect upon. I’m sorry if any of this sounds confusing, but trust me on that one. Tells the past, present, and future without even knowing who you are or where you’ve lived. Does that not beat a crystal ball?

Boards of Canada you have done something many strive to do, and so few ever achieve. Memorable, warm, soothing, and just overall interesting, this is an album with high replay value. Some days you can listen to it, other days you can become part of it. So for my final few minutes, before I leave to go who knows where to watch the ball drop, I enlighten myself of a review I’ve been meaning to write. Could never find the right words except 5/5.

Buy Boards of Canada – Music Has The Right To Children @ Amazon

The Future Sound of London – Dead Cities

This album is a testament to advanced creative thinking. It always was ahead of its time, and i think it still is almost 8 years on. Nothing else exists that sounds anything like this.
Having been an FSOL fan for much of my life, i have never been compelled to write anything about them. Til now, mainly because of the fact that they are still going strong and their music is just as lush and atmospheric as it was a decade ago.

Where to begin. Dead Cities is the only record i have ever sold, probably due to the fact that it was seriously creepy, disjointed and a little bit worrying, especially when accompanied by the artwork, which was a little too apocalyptic for my tastes when i was 15 years old and still listening to Apollo 440.

What a pleasant surprise it was to reaquire this record 6 years on since parting company. FSOL don’t make music like most people do. Their live show is a testament to that. It can only be described as a living, breathing soundscape (anybody with the Lifeforms EP will recognise this), which changes frequently and evokes all kinds of emotions, from fear to joy. The attention to detail is quite staggering, the only other artist that springs to mind with such vision is Amon Tobin.

Daker techno moments surface with Herd Killing and We Have Explosive, which are probably the most accessible tracks on the record. Lesser known gems include Vit Drowning and Yage, a stunningly beautiful section of four tracks which include Everyone in the World…, My Kingdom, Max and Antique Toy. This particular section of the album is the backbone of it, where the rest of it fleshes it out perfectly and provides cohesion.

The closer is a gem. Just when you think all is said and done, FSOL have one last thing on their mind. The heavy metal thrash at the end is very interesting. It would seem almost like a therapy session for the group by trying to get something off of their chests and the signalling of an end of a musical chapter of the band. As we all know, their consecutive albums after this was their Amorphous Androgynous outings which were largely inspired by the instrumental experimentation that went on at this time in the band.

But why 4 stars and not 5? If anybody has listened to much FSOL, this album can only achieve 4 stars with respect to FSOL’s standards. Lifeforms (EP and Album), Accelerator and The Isness have a charm about them. Where these albums are about a celebration of life (amongst other things), this album is about paranoia and the inevitability of death and despair.

The apocalyptic feel of this album is well integrated into the music and artwork, along with their short film Teachings from the Electronic Brain, and it must be said that it does have its lighter moments in the form of My Kingdom, Antique Toy and Yage (I can’t get it out of my head), so it’s not all doom and gloom.

Maybe get the others before this one if you are new to FSOL. It is not a true reflection on the band as a whole, it serves more to demonstrate that “yes, we can go there if we want to” kind of mentality.

But then again, if you like good electronic music, especially those who like Mr Tobin’s work, Global Communication and to a lesser extent Brian Eno’s ambient outings, you shouldn’t be disappointed with this. A timeless classic. Just wish i never sold it in the first place.

Buy Future Sound of London – Dead Cities @ Amazon

Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks

Conceptually, Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks– German-born composer mixes contemporary classical compositions with electronic elements in a dreamscapy journalogue featuring excerpts from Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks as narrated by Tilda Swinton– reads like a relentlessly precious endeavor, as new age music for grad students, the sort of record that sagely pats you on the back for being smart enough to seek it out. And yet in practice, despite the fact that it is exactly as outlined above, Kafka quotes and all, there is absolutely nothing exclusive or contrived-feeling about it. In fact, not only is Richter’s second album one of the finest of the last six months, it is also one of the most affecting and universal contemporary classical records in recent memory.

But how to describe music that relies so completely on seeming familiar? Richter may fancy himself in a class with Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Steve Reich (indeed, his hyperattenuated sense of minimalism owes to all three), but unlike his influences, he’s not remotely interested in subverting the traditional rules of composition. Short of one very beautiful moment that plunges an electronic sublow bassline into a deep sea of harpsichords and violas (see: the literally perfect “Shadow Journal”), there is nothing here to suggest that Richter is concerned with anything other than melody and economy. It’s a formula he singlemindedly exploits with staggering effectiveness for the balance of the album’s 40+ minutes.

Constituted mainly of sparse pieces that lean on string quartets and pianos in equal measure, The Blue Notebooks is a case study in direct, minor-key melody. Each of the piano pieces “Horizon Variations”, “Vladimir’s Blues” and “Written in the Sky” establish strong melodic motifs in under two minutes, all the while resisting additional orchestration. Elsewhere, Richter’s string suites are similarly striking; “On the Nature of Daylight” coaxes a stunning rise out of gently provincial arrangements while the comparatively epic penultimate track “The Trees” boasts an extended introductory sequence for what is probably the album’s closest brush with grandiosity. Richter’s slightly less traditional pieces also resound; both the underwater choral hymnal “Iconography” and the stately organ piece “Organum” echo the spiritual ambience that characterized his work for Future Sound of London.

If, however, there is one piece that fires The Blue Notebooks off into the stratosphere, it’s the aforementioned “Shadow Journal”. Featuring a lone viola, some burbling electronics, a harpsichord and a subterranean bassline, it establishes a simple, keening melody and then gently pulls it wide, like warm string taffy, across its eight minutes. The fourth track on the record, it is nonetheless its centerpiece, and on a larger scale, possibly a gigantic beacon for composers searching for useful ways to introduce dance music’s visceral, body-jarring qualities into the classical sphere.

But make no mistake, this is not Richter’s electronic/classical crossover, nor it is really his concept record. In fact, with songs that similarly forgo the temptations of complexity and choice so as to preserve their core ideas, it’s perhaps better thought of as his four-track demo, his lo-fi recording jaunt. It’s Max Richter testing himself to see what he can produce under restraint. Turns out it’s more than he might have otherwise.

Buy Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks @ Amazon

Eluvium – Copia

Eluvium is the project of Matthew Cooper, who has abandoned many of the conventional instruments used by bands and by him in the past. There is no guitar to be found on this instrumental epic, but varied brass, keyboards, piano, and stringed instruments fill the speakers with beautiful emotive brilliance. Copia is the result of a transformation for Eluvium, and it’s not a bad thing.

“Amreik” begins the journey. Horns are beautifully arranged on top of some keyboard work that is subtle and ambient. The piece is moving and a grand entrance to the rest of the disc. “Indoor Swimming at the Space Station” sets off with soaring, vast soundscapes built on keys and strings. The mood is dark and solemn, perhaps like the emptiness of space. Piano is added for depth as the layers become complex and louder. One has the sense that the track is conveying a feeling of floating, endlessly floating. All that is bright and all that is beautiful is hidden deep within the vastness and melancholy tones of this track. A wind or brass instrument comes in to add texture over the piano and ambient bed of music. Eventually, ambient keys are left to communicate the emotion of the composition. Then, strange sounds fill the speakers as the song works its way to its 10:29 finish line.

“Seeing You Off the Edges” is seamlessly connected to the prior track. Soaring keyboards fill the speakers as walls of sound wash over the listener. The mood is somber and beautiful all at the same time. Moving and spacious, Matthew Cooper paints beautiful pictures with his music. “Prelude for Time Feelers” is a piano piece that is simple and elegant. Light synths come into the background ever so subtly to give depth to the stripped down pianos. Then, in a moment, the piano changes and a brass instrument accompanies the melody. Evoking days gone by and fond memories, this track brings cold fall days and snowy winter days by the fireplace to mind. “Requiem on Frankfort Ave.” is introduced with a beautiful set of horns and violin. Patient and bold, the composition is breathtaking. This entire disc moves like a soundtrack to a grand movie or is akin to a neo-classical set of tracks with ambience in the backdrop.

“Radio Ballet” begins with bright piano. The entire song contains variations on the same melody and is entirely a piano piece. “(Intermission)” has clanking sounds with tiny moments of ambiance. It is brief, but it provides a direct insight into the purpose of the artist. It is certainly a disc that is epic and has movements akin to classical music. The second half of the disc begins with “After Nature.” Bright keyboards fill the speakers with some strings bringing depth to the piece. This brief song leads into “Reciting the Airships.” Piano leads to airy keys that blend to make perfect, soaring compositions. The emotive elements in all Cooper’s tracks are brilliant and convey sadness, melancholy, and at the same time hope.

“Osinato” begins with organ rising in volume steadily. This has a brilliant ambient affect as horns join in to help build a wall of sound. This eventually comes down from its vast sound and fades into “Hymn #1.” Rain fills the speakers with piano playing amidst the downpour. About half-way through, the piano drops out and then comes back in to ease the listener out of the track and into “Repose in Blue.” Strings and keys create an under-layer that is accented with subtle variations. Horns rise in majestic style and grace. The track is patient and is punctuated with what sounds like fireworks. The finale is ringing in the end of the epic journey on which Cooper has taken the listener. Evoking ancient lands and the deepest emotions, Cooper brings his grand album to a close with excellence and perfection.

The new direction for Eluvium is breathtaking and simply impressive. Cooper has crafted a masterpiece that is ambient, deep, complex and meaningful.

Buy Eluvium – Copia @ Amazon

Helios – Unomia

This is the first album from Portland-based ambient artist Helios that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to, and I must say it was an incredibly eye-opening (or should I say, mind’s eye-opening) experience. We use words like “evocative” and “atmospheric” and “captivating” to describe certain kinds of music that elicit emotional responses of serenity and contentment. But until now, I’ve not really found many artists that do this so well. At the very least, Helios has discovered an unique niche in a genre that needs new sounds and aesthetics.

While much of contemporary electronic ambient music is overly manipulated, minimalistic, experimental, or reliant on sampling classical music and nature sounds, Helios takes the best aspects of the genre and mingles them into a complexly layered symphony. I realize this sounds cliché, but it’s truly the best way to describe the unique aesthetic presented on Unomia. The album covers the gamut from gentle instrumental riffs to melodic downtempo to well-integrated synthy electronica to crafty minimalist experimentation. It varies the mood from soothing to slightly dark to upbeat to almost brooding to serene.

Bottom line: this is an album to be experienced. Grab a glass of wine, dim the lights and plug this one in. I can pretty well guarantee you’ll enjoy the ride.

Buy Helios – Unomia @ Amazon

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