Various - The Werkstatt Chronicles - 2009-2014

Werkstatt Records: 2014

I didn't plan on getting this. All I wanted was a nifty Arcade Metropolis t-shirt from the label's Bandcamp. For some reason though, they threw this digital download of fifty-six tracks in with the article of clothing I purchased. That's... a lot more Werkstatt Records music than I'm willing to take in. It'd translate to at least three CDs of material, maybe four, and who wants to read about that much amateur efforts at techno, industrial, EBM, and synthwave?

That isn't meant as a slam. Listening to the early portions of this compilation, it's clear Werkstatt and their artists had some growing to do. The best compliment I can give this stuff is that it wouldn't sound out of place as filler on a late '90s Hypnotic/Cleopatra CD, so take that as you will. I get the sense these musicians were more enamoured with creating clever artist names than the actual music they were making: Boogie Vertigo, Azure Defiance, The Psychedelic Dream Vortex, Droid Sector Decay, Avalanche Reverb Prozac, United States Of Atrocity, Moscow Locomotives, DJs On Acid Destroy Commercial Europe, Synthesizer.

One of the few early acts that does leap out with stronger songcraft chops compared to everyone else is, unsurprisingly, Beatbox Machinery; aka: Toxic Razor, the dude who founded Werkstatt. And when Kriistal Ann is added for their duo of Resistance Of Independent Music, it's clear the two will have a lasting impact on the label's future prospects. It's as though Werkstatt's finally found its footing and ready to take it's next step forward - from digital dumping ground to a place where aspiring, talented producers could make a home. Or use as a launching point for a larger career at least.

Okay, it wasn't all at once. Kriistal Ann doesn't make her first appearance until track fifteen, and for many tracks after, it's still shaky ground between improved, interesting synth music and noisy, nonsensical industrial waffle (got the dreaded “TURN THAT SHIT OFF!” while playing it at work). Is it any surprise that as Werkstatt steadily inches towards synthwave, the better the overall product sounds? Or, I dunno, maybe there's folks who prefer the aggro industrial stuff over the chipper, poppier synth music – I don't have enough involvement with the industrial scene to make that informed an opinion on what's represented here. It could be top-tier tuneage for all I know. I'm sure, however, we can all agree that EBM is the fun compromise between these two worlds!

Once The Werkstatt Chronicles passes track thirty, the synthwave really starts taking over, though EBM still gets a few looks in too. Hey, GosT is here! And there's Kriistal Ann's darkwave solo stuff. Ooh, I recognize more of these names: Ghost Patrol, Radio Poltergeist, Dan Terminus, Resist Concept. But yeah, most of my Werkstatt exposure comes after this period of the label's lifespan. T'was an interesting jaunt into their early years, but it isn't the music that lured me into their fold in the first place.

Legiac - The Voynich Manuscript

Dronarivm: 2016

Hey, it's another Dronarivm release. Remember when I went through a bunch of these at the start of this months-long alphabetical backlog? My how time flies. Been nearly one-hundred reviews written since the last item from this label, and the fact I'm still not through yet sends my mind to the lands of Bogglin. Heck, this marks the fifth 'V' album in this batch, which increased my total 'V' albums by 30%! Can you just imagine how many 'W's there are? (spoiler: not many)

There hasn't been much released under the name Legiac, but the players involved have definitely been busy bodies. Dutch brothers Don and Roel Funcken started out doing glitchy braindance, IDM, and electro under a number of aliases, most prominent being Funckarma, Cane, and Mystery Artist. They got a look-in with Very Important IDM labels like Warp and Skam, but never broke out of obscurity in any significant way. The other player involved in Legiac is Cor Bolten, who Lord Discogs tells me was active with new wave bands since the early '80s, whilst doing film score work on the side.

Seems like an unlikely pairing with these folks, but somewhere along the way, they did team up. First it was doing experimental stuff as Cor Bolten, Don Funcken & Roel Funcken, then doing downtempo, abstract stuff as Dif:use, and finally IDM leaning material as Legiac. That one looked to be a one-off effort, and a final one, the individual parties going their separate ways again. A few years ago though, Roel and Cor dusted Legiac off, The Voynich Manuscript their second album under the revitalized project. Yo', where Don in all this?

When I first dove into this album, I wasn't expecting something as melodic as we get here. True, I didn't have any prior musical knowledge of Misters Funcken and Bolten, just my preconceived notions based on what Dronarivm works I have taken in. And for sure there's ample amounts of droning ambience and blanketing field recordings present, but often used in a subtler, graceful manner than most other works in this vein. There's space and depth in these layers of sound, with melodic tones at the fore, but never so prominent they drown out the burbling static and white noise lurking underneath. What's remarkable is the chaotic sub-surface of sound is so consistent throughout this album, whenever it does recede, it not only makes the melodic leads leap out, you also feel that absence as though you've lost a chunk of your soul. Or maybe it's just like that in the final piece Ambikythera Mechanism, what with opulent organ tones driving things forward.

It really is a gorgeous composition, and many of the early tracks in The Voynich Manuscript are darn lovely as well. However, there's also a lengthy stretch towards the back-half that kinda' dithers about with wallpaper sonic doodles and experimental drone. They're fine in their own right, but compared to the highs this album hits, kinda' forgettable too. So it goes.

Rapoon - Psi-Transient

Aquarellist: 2013

I first stumbled upon Rapoon way back in my initial ambient explorations, and have consistently seen his name crop up ever since. However, an impossibly high work-rate has left Robin Storey with an incredibly daunting discography, Lord Discogs listing over seventy albums to his name. Hell, there's over twenty listed since Psi-Transient dropped four years ago! And that's not to mention his pioneering work with seminal dark ambient act Zoviet France before he went solo. So a regular busy-body all said, one I probably wasn't ready to take a plunge with back when, but definitely ready for here-now. Only trouble is where do I start? With a discography this extensive, I'll have to do some serious research, verify expert opinions, study scene influ- oh, never mind, I'll just buy this particular one I see on sale at Reverse Alignment's online shop.

Along with his Zoviet background, one of the things that made Rapoon stand out in the nu-Nineties ambient scene was his inclusion of ethnic and tribal sounds. This could be anything from drums, woodwinds, or chants, but always manipulated in such a way as to fit his looping, droning sound experiments. I honestly don't know how much of this has carried over to his recent output, as there's no possible way I'm taking in all of his music in such a short amount of time. I'd need a full day to just get through what's offered on Spotify alone, and there's not a person alive with that sort of attention span anymore. What I can tell you is if you're expecting some of that ethnic styling in Psi-Transient, you'll be left wanting.

Fortunately, I have such little knowledge of Rapoon's overall output, I come in with no preconceived biases. On the other hand, I've no clue where Psi-Transient exists within his oeuvre. Maybe nowhere specific, Mr. Storey striking me as the sort that follows wherever his muse takes him. If that means shovelling out music created for its own sake, then so be it.

For instance, opening track Shake Root prominently features distorted, thunking rhythms, and had me thinking I'd be in for some noisy, industrial-leaning sonic assaults; definitely not something I was expecting in the slightest. Then follow-up track Sentire goes mellow with gentle synth tones and looping, dubby drums pitter-pattering in the background. Ah, feeding off that old-school ambient techno vibe, then. Nah, scratch the 'techno' part of that, the next couple tracks strictly synth pad noodling. Then we're treated to some modern classical dalliances, More Halls And Afternoons Of Sun a gentle piano piece, In Voice We See mostly orchestral strings played in reverse.

From there, much of Psi-Transient flits between ambient drone and experimental modern classical pieces (ooh, trumpets in Smoke Glass Weed, like elephants trippin' on acid!). It's all very strangely captivating music, in a wall-papery sort of way. A fairly pleasant album, all said, though maybe not the best introduction to Rapoon's music. Which of his seventy albums are, though?

Jiri.Ceiver - Head.Phon

Harthouse: 1995

Jiri.Ceiver strikes me as one of those techno producers that could have gone down as Very Important, had things gone just slightly differently for the chap. For sure appearing on Sven Väth's lauded Harthouse print gave him plenty of exposure, but he had some tough acts to follow from the label's opening salvo (Hardfloor, Spicelab, Der Dritte Raum, Alter Ego, Koxbox). Couple that with the fact Frankfurt's brand of techno was coming off a tad dated by 1995, the blistering BPMs and hypnotic melodies falling out of favour in lieu of the functionalist warehouse tools Detroit and Berlin had started cranking out. Harthouse was finding ways of adapting with these changing trends, stating they sought producers on the cutting edge of “creativity and experiments that do not necessarily originate from the Techno/House scene.” - essentially an “idea tank”, though clearly they couldn't commit full-stop to the manifesto, the IDM wonks leagues beyond anything Väth's label would churn out.

Head.Phon comes close though, for good and ill. One Arno Paul Jiri Kraehahn was already an odd sheep out of the Harthouse flock, his debut single Multiplex a weird mishmash of Frankfurt techno and bleepy electro. He followed that up by getting deeper into the acid action (Hardfloor's influence was inescapable), but eschewed anything remotely resembling a hook or melody in the process. He was on a mission to feed you weird machine sounds whether you liked it or not, functionality be damned. Hey, not a bad idea, as techno had gained a reputation for being dominated by mechanical fetishism, though always in a far-flung futuristic aesthetic, not as a contemporary sound – wasn't that what Industrial was for anyhow?

Maybe Head.Phon would have been better received with that in mind, making no illusion you're in for a challenging trip into the experimental side of techno. Half the tracks are sonic doodles and abstract noises, some like Isolate, Retrospect, Sleeps, and Tne Poise so minimalistic and quiet you'd be forgiven in thinking the CD had prematurely stopped playing. What even is the point of these? I'm not gaining any deeper appreciation for electronic abstraction with them, and musique concrete was hardly in need for a revival in the '90s when so much else kept pushing electronic music forward. They honestly come across as begrudging filler to reach a full-length album, as the main techno cuts weren't enough.

And as for these, they're a strange, esoteric bunch. Hvb and Vacui offer up bleepy, squelchy Frankfurt acid, Trental400/5 is eight minutes of soft, minimal crunchy noises and bloopy beats, Ratio sounds like proto psy-trance of around the time, and Osiac... hey, this is actually at a reasonable pace, with reasonable acid and reasonable techno toolism. Probably could have been rinsed out ten years later if Very Important Techno DJs had the single.

But yeah, because Head.Phon was too Frankfurt for techno purists, and too weird for trance fiends, it got lost in the shuffle, as did most of Jiri.Ceiver's work. A shame.

Fjäder - Shades Of Light

Shaded Explorations: 2016

I forget how I stumbled upon this. For sure it was via a Bandcamp link, but given my conservative excursions through the website, it wasn’t intentional. Perhaps it’s because Shades Of Light came out on a label called Shaded Explorations. It just so happens that I did a review for Shaded Explorer this past half-year, and some Bandcamp Googling for the latter may have accidentally led me to Ms. Fjäder instead. I do recall, however, that the moment I saw the CD packaging displayed, I was intrigued; a black cover with an intricate cut-out, and a simple cardboard sleeve slipped inside. It’s always nice when hopelessly underground artists take extra care in crafting their ultra-limited run hard copies. A very quick sampling of the music confirmed Shades Of Light was at least electronic, so I took the gamble and waited for the goods to arrive for audio consumption.

And this… I wasn’t expecting this. Something dubby and ambient, sure, as the brief clips I played suggested as much. But ethereal dub techno with live instruments? (Pianos! Voices! Strings! oh my) Is this even a thing? I feel like this should be a thing, but I can’t say I’ve come across anything like Fjäder’s music before.

The lass behind the moniker, Ida Matsdotter, has been making music for a few years now, her most prominent bit of exposure coming at the tail-end of a 4CD M_nus box set titled Enter.Ibiza 2015. Cool that she got to rub shoulders with the likes of Slam, Beltram, and the Plastikman himself on that particular set from TM404, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she went overlooked regardless. Still, a couple more appearances on various compilations, podcasts, and the odd single has given her a decent start in the world of techno, thus we now arrive for Album Time with her debut of Shades of Light.

Opener Yellow Cosmic Sun is a beatless, dubby, droning piece with various strings and vocal snippets fed through heavy, throbbing effects, feeling more of a meditative outing than something intended for club use. Second track तूफान केंद्रअ (Google translate tells me this is Hindi for ‘eye of the storm’) brings in ethereal chants coupled with a marching rhythm that sounds like it’s being dropped into digital water. World beat with a dub techno twist? I can dig it.

The one consistent element I’m hearing throughout Shades Of Light is no genre fusion is off limits, a remarkable strategy considering dub techno’s staunch, stuffy traditionalism. There are a couple examples of that deep, minimalist, rolling warehaus thump in tracks like Abyss and Dragonfly, but elsewhere Fjäder breaks those beats up into something more akin to experimental trip-hop (Talk To You, twelve-minute long Vintergatan). There’s ethereal ambient (Shades Of Light), crushing drone ambient (Venus), and feedback-fuzz ambient (Hjärtans Fröjd). I also quite like that she isn’t afraid to manipulate her voice to such a degree it’s almost unrecognizable from other layers of timbre. No ego here, my friends.

Valiska - A Day As A Blade Of Grass

Inner Ocean Records: 2013

I name-dropped this label a few months back, partly as a quip in yet another list of obscure ambient prints so many producers float to and from on. The only thing that honestly caught my eye regarding Inner Ocean Records is the fact it’s a Canadian outfit, not that anyone reading that particular review would know it (or maybe so, if they’re Porya Hatami completists). For whatever reason, I checked Inner Ocean a little deeper, and intrigued by their wares, snatched up every single CD their Bandcamp had on offer. All two of them. Quite a few cassettes though. Eh, I’ll pass on that format, thank you.

What’s even quirkier about that ‘splurge’, is of the two CDs I got, this particular release from Valiska, barely constitutes a traditional CD release. A Day As A Blade Of Grass is a single track, lasting all of twenty-four minutes, plunking it in the realm of EPs. It’s also the sort of release I’d expect to stumble across in the CD3 format ‘90s ambient labels would indulge in, before digital means rendered them moot. I’m surprised mini-discs haven’t also formed their own comeback as a hip collectable – they’re certainly no less impractical than tapes in our modern age. Maybe if Blood Music starts distributing them, we’ll see a resurgent market of CD3s.

Valiska is Krzysztof Sujata, and hails from Calgary (Inner Ocean’s base of operations), despite what you might assume based on his name (Polish India?). Although given the nature of the music within this album-EP-composition, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did originate from some Eastern Europe bloc homestead, that region flush with experimental ambient shoegaze-drone sorts; you sure don’t think of Canadian prairie country when it comes to this sound. He’s released about a dozen items this past decade (so sayeth The Discogs), some through his own means, others on various obscure experimental net labels that skew towards the indie rock side of things. He also happens to do digital mastering, so if you need a spit-shine to your drone-gaze glitch-twang demo tape while checking out the Calgary Stampede, give him a shout.

Though I currently lack the needed citation, I’ll assume A Day As A Blade Of Grass aims to literally capture what it’s like to live one’s life as a blade of grass – lawn, pasture, open field, Icelandic roof-top… any type of poaceae. Dawn breaks with tranquil, ambient pianos, solar photons providing our grass with vital energy to aid in photosynthesis. Soon though, abrasive, caustic distortion and guitar feedback emerge, disrupting the once calm mood. The animals and machines have come, trampling your space with hoof, claw, boot, and tire. Grazers chomp and chew at your surroundings, seldom leaving you a moment’s peace. Other sounds – reverse tape loops, detuned strings, grinding and clattering, feed a harrowing third act, respite only granted as the day finally recedes into night, our singular blade still alive for another day. Man, who knew grass had it so tough?

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Touch: 2016

It’s improper of me starting an inexplicable dark ambient collection without gathering up releases from some of the agreed-upon legends of the scene. That’d be like getting into trance without checking out Oliver Lieb, or house music without copping Frankie Knuckles. Not to mention digging techno while ignoring the Belleville Three, or taking in jungle without a single Goldie single – my lone copy of Inner City Life on a Canadian compilation saves me such indignity.

So Lustmord was an obligatory purchase sooner rather than later, and to be honest, I’ve had my eye on the chap’s material for a while. His earliest material was in the vein of experimental stuff industrial artists were doing in the ‘80s, but along the way he adopted the lengthy drones of ambient composers, plus a fascination for the haunting emptiness of ancient caverns and the cosmos itself. He probably wasn’t the first to do it, but his 1994 album The Place Where The Black Stars Hang is widely regarded as the definitive example of space dark ambient, an LP frequently namedropped by all those who came after. You bet it’s on my list of “One Day, Eventually” albums I must own!

For now though, I’ll take in something more current, and it just so happens Lustmord returned to the realm of universal drone this past year, with Dark Matter. The concept is familiar enough with anyone that’s followed this style of dark ambient: take the natural, electromagnetic sounds of the cosmos – from the smallest molecules and charged particles, to the largest solar flares and quasars - and do as you will with them. Sampling these sounds is practically part of space ambient’s gene code now, especially ever since the Jet Propulsion Laboratory released their Symphonies Of The Planets series, recordings of planetary electromagnetic signals captured by the passing Voyager probes. These recordings are such a staple now, they’re almost cliché. Perhaps that’s why it took Lustmord this long to fully explore its potential - he felt it a classic case of “it’s been done.”

Or he was waiting to have complete, unfettered access to all the N.A.S.A. audio archives rather than those few commercially released ones. A man with his standing would definitely get that eventually, thus Lustmord finally gives us a full taste of cosmic drone, complete and utter in its various sources. And… I can’t really explain much more beyond this, can I? Folks familiar with electromagnetic sound experiments will be enthralled in the journey Lustmord takes with them, while the rest won’t have much inclining of what’s going on.

Of the three tracks here (each breaching twenty minutes apiece, though the first nabs a hefty seven extra for itself), only Subspace offers anything resembling music, and that’s soon subsumed by the cosmic drone too. There’s an ever-present deep thrum of drone, as though the universe is breathing, and sounds proper-huge when you crank your stereo. Your neighbors will wonder if there’s a black-hole core in the building.

The Black Dog - Spanners

Warp Records/EastWest Records America: 1994/1995

The only The Black Dog album you’re supposed to have, even if you’re not a The Black Dog fan. At least for casual music consumers, it was the only proper album you would get from them, because it was the only one most folks knew about. Their early self-released material may have been seminal works of leftfield techno, but mostly languished in obscurity from all but the most enlightened heads. It wasn’t until they snagged a spiffy deal with Warp Records that everyone finally took notice there was something interesting going on from this UK trio. Alas, those who initially slept on their early material would never see a glorious run following Spanners, Andy Turner and Ed Handley leaving to pursue their Plaid prospects. That left Ken Downie in the dust, Black Dog receding into an on/off project until hooking up with a pair of Dust brothers (no, not those Dust Brothers …or those other ‘Dust Brothers’) into a Black Dog Renaissance enjoyed to this day. It looked dicey for a while though, Spanners but a tantalizing tease for a promising legacy.

Another thing that propels Spanners above every other LP the group put out during the project’s Phase I era is how it’s the most album-album of all this period’s releases. Bytes was more a compilation of the group’s solo projects, Parallel a gathering of their earliest singles. Temple Of Transparent Balls, while officially The Black Dog’s first full-length, still came off like a smattering of disconnected tracks, understandable given the disparate muses the group clearly had. Spanners could have come off the same way too, had they not done a bit of clever track sequencing, linking the various main tracks with minute-length transitional pieces, or Bolts, as they titled them. They’re the glue holding Spanners together.

No, seriously, it’s remarkable how flowing this album is thanks to these experimental doodles. Opener Raxmus is a dub heavy piece of trip-hop business thick with THC haze, while second proper track Barbola Work sounds like the charmingly chintzy techno-salsa Yello might have made. These tunes have nothing in common, yet they sound natural in such close proximity thanks to Bolt 1’s weird, brief sonic experiments bridging the two. And Spanners is like this throughout!

Some track pairings don’t require Bolting, the ten-minute Detroit techno cut Psil Cosyin leading wonderfully into the tribal ambient thump of Chase The Manhattan. On the other hand, the laidback pastoral-hop of Pot Noddle only works in isolation, especially considering follow-up End Of Time is about as straight-forward a spaced-out techno cut as The Black Dog ever did. Bolt that right up, ol’ ancient sci-fi sounds of Bolt 6!

I will say, however, that due to all these interstitial Bolts, Spanners does feel overlong - nineteen tracks total, a third of which are Bolts. By the time final track Chesh is toying around with nods to modern classical harping, I’m about ready to tap out. So much eclecticism in this album. Just… so much…

Dopplereffekt - Linear Accelerator

International Deejays Gigolo: 2003

Dopplereffekt is Gerald Donald (and a rotating partner), a darn important person in the world of techno. Mostly for his contributions to Drexciya and Underground Resistance, though this project is held near the same reverent breath from Detroit electro disciples. Heck, some could even point to this act as a precursor to electroclash, the minimalist, sleazy Pornoactress from the 1996 single Infophysix oozing all sorts of detached, deadpan cool. DJ Hell must have thought so, signing Mr. Donald to his International Deejay Gigolo print. Instead of more Dopplereffekt material though, there was Virtual Geisha as Japanese Telecom, a kitschy electro album at the height of electroclash’s kitschy dominance. Then there’s Der Zyklus’ II, which contained some classics of the electro revival in its own right (d’at Discogs Market price, tho’!).

For all intents though, it seemed Mr. Donald was done with Dopplereffekt after making his debut on Hell’s label with the 1999 retrospective Gesamtkunstwerk. But maybe there was enough demand from the Gigolo faithful to hear more under that particular guise, hence the eventual LP we have here. That, or ol’ Gerald was contractually obligated to provide a proper album of new material as Dopplereffekt before moving on. I mean, it’s mighty suspicious this is his last release with Gigolo. It would go a long way into explaining why Linear Accelerator is a rather challenging record.

For sure earlier Dopplereffekt had a hard sci-fi element to it, a fascination with lab experiments and high-end technology. Linear Accelerator takes that to the extreme though, with track titles like Myon-Neutrino, Higgs-Mechanism, and Niobium Resonators. And the music? It’s a long wait for anything resembling a tune on this album. The opening track Photo Injector is over twenty-one minutes of clanking machinery, miniscule bloops, and all sorts of musique concrete abstraction. Niobium Resonators follows, nearly fifteen minutes of clicks, pops, and blast-processing noise. Third cut Graviton runs an additional fourteen minutes, has a muffled, garbled synth running through it, while clicks, pops, and static do the experimental glitch thing that was increasingly in vogue around this time with artsty techno sorts. In case you haven’t kept tally, that’s a whopping forty-nine minutes of this album spent experimenting with electronic sounds. Linear Accelerator has a runtime of seventy minutes, mind you.

The final three tracks do offer some melodic yin to the difficult yang of the first three. Myon-Neutrino has a groovy acid bassline with a haunting sci-fi hook, Z-Boson goes more spritely in its choice of synths, while Higgs-Mechanism offers the closest thing to an electro cut out of anything on here, though significantly muted compared to Donald’s other works.

Obviously Linear Accelerator isn’t an album for the faint of heart - only those who thrill at the intense potential of electronic experimentation need apply. I’m just confounded at how such an abstract release found its way onto Gigolo. Either DJ Hell was aiming for a trendy Mille Plateaux rub, or Donald was having a pisstake with the whole electro revivalist thing.

Anthony Rother - Elixir Of Life

Fax +49-69/450464: 2003

I’ve talked Anthony Rother up a great deal, and for good reason. The man almost single-handedly gave retro electro a good kick in the arsch, among the leaders in the genre’s turn of the century revival. And yet, this is the first album I’ve actually picked up from the chap, but it’s not my fault. His seminal ‘90s work is just so darn expensive, cherished collector’s items that few are willing to part without handsome financial reparation. Yes, even his ventures into synth pop and electroclash, though honestly I can’t say that stuff interests me as much as the stark robot workout music he crafted prior.

And truthfully, I wasn’t searching for Rother albums when I spotted this for a cheeky twenty – I was hunting about for Fax +49-69/450464 musics. That I found Elixir Of Life for such a reasonable price only sweetened the deal, because if there’s any name that seems totally at odds with the famed Pete Namlook print, it’s this German electro maestro. I’ll grant ol’ Anth’ has a muse that stretches beyond the limited palette of robot jams, but releasing music on a label known for old school ambient, nu-skool ambient, ambient techno, and ambient-noodlesoup? A most intriguing development indeed, one that yielded five albums worth on Fax+ before the label was forced into premature closure. Makes me wonder if Mr. Rother will end up on Carpe Sonum sometime in the near future.

If you’re heading into Elixir Of Life anticipating more electro or *gasp* electro pop, forget it. The title or artwork should give the hint: this is music with the ‘70s in sight, coming off like a long lost piece of classic experimental krautrock than anything intended with modern sensibilities. One track, Elixir Of Life (Part 8), does offer some robot beatcraft, but aside from that, the only sense of rhythm comes from simmering subdued sequencers the likes commonly heard in Berlin-School works (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 7). There isn’t much melody on this album either, though some nice minimal pad work does show up towards the end, especially in Part 9. Other pieces go straight drone, letting an all-pervasive analog hiss dominate for the duration before moving onto another piece. Oh yeah, that hiss doesn’t let up throughout the album, actually growing more prominent as Elixir Of Life plays out. I guess it helps tie everything together into a continuous theme, though I’m at a loss as to what theme Rother had in mind here, beyond doing a take on crusty electronic experimentation. His musique concrete dalliance gets absurd with Part 5, where a kick gets warped, sped-up, bent, slowed, and stretched to all manner of weird abstraction.

Considering the Plastikman also appeared on Fax+, I can’t say Mr. Rother’s offering here is unprecedented, though fancying the deep end of this style of music is a must. Elixir Of Life will come off as one big disappointing whiff of droning nothing otherwise. Strictly a fans only album, this.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog VIII

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1999/2016

This series wasn’t the only instance of Misters Schulze and Kuhlmann collaborating, Namlook also lending a hand on Klaus’ 1996 album Are You Sequenced. Essentially Schulze’s stab at updating his sound, the album was met with plaudits from his long-standing followers, and indifferent snickers from actual techno dorks. So it goes, but for the purpose of showcasing everything he and Pete worked together on, we get a few tracks from that record included as a bonus CD of the second box set in this reissue extravaganza. SQ 1 runs seventeen minutes, doing the trancey space-synth stuff we’ve heard elsewhere on Dark Side Of The Moog, Namlook provides a pulsing Chill Mix for Voices In The Dark, while SQ 4 goes full classic trance – why only the Short Cut though? In any event, this is a perfectly fine bonus disc, and thankfully wasn’t another reissue of a prior album, because I’ve been at these Dark Side Of The Moogs long enough, eh?

And so it’s come to this: my final entry into the epic Klaus-Pete saga. Unless I spring for the third box set, but nay, I’m not in any hurry for that. Or maybe so, if Dark Side Of The Moog VIII is an indicator of things to come. Stretching that “this series are ‘90s TV seasons!” analogy further, Season 8 of most shows often feature a radical twist or ratings stunt to shake up the status quo, and this album comes through once again. For you see, my friends, th’ar be d’n’b in here!

But first, a twenty-five minute opener of psy dub, world beat, and cosmic music. Wait, are we certain Bill Laswell’s no longer around? Other parts of Careful With The AKS, Peter feature short sound-effect doodles (Part II), straight-up psy dub freak-outs (Part IV), throwback modern classical (Part III, Part V, Part VIII), and one Hell of a techno stomper in fifteen-minute long Part VI. Throw in some wailing synth solos (or is that a guitar?) that would have Steve Hillage weak in the knees, and call me flabbergasted we’re still dealing with a two-man party of Schulze and Namlook. And that’s before they start dropping drillin’ Amen Breaks in Part VII! Seriously, jungle is the last thing I’d ever expect these guys taking on – hardcore is a less daft notion, given their proximity to German hard dance – yet here we are, eight album deep in the series, actual freewheelin’ d’n’b on the CD, and sounding not a touch out of place. This, from a Fax+ release? Astounding! Or a ‘shark jumping’ moment if you’re brutal cynical, but I like Part VIII too much to care about scene purity.

And that about wraps up our week-plus long journey to the Dark Side Of The Moog. From here, the two would collaborate less frequently, reconvening every few years for another studio session, plus a couple live shows too. After Namlook’s untimely death though, that was all she wrote for the longest running series in Fax+’ legacy.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook featuring Bill Laswell - The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog

Ambient World/MIG: 2002/2016

I wasn’t considering detailing the bonus discs of these Dark Side Of The Moog box sets. True, I’ve a commitment to reviewing Every.Single. CD. of my music collection, but I’ve fudged things here and there. Most double-disc entries receive a lone write-up from yours truly, and even 3CD sets are sometimes reduced to a singular offering of my self-imposed word count (sorry, Trade: Past-Present-Future; not-sorry, This Is… Techno). What harm is there in quickly glossing over redundant features, of which I’m almost certain these bonus discs are. What does Vol. 1 of this bundle include anyhow?

The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog, eh. Huh, it’s got completely different cover art from all the stock ones used for the other CDs. It also apparently contains tracks from each of the first eight editions of the series (or ‘excerpts’ in the case of Wish You Were There and A Saucerful Of Ambience, since those two weren’t indexed as typical albums). I guess this would serve as a handy hour-long summation of Namlook’s work with Schulze, picking out the highlights, or at least the best musical representation of the project. Why stop at Dark Side Of The Moog VIII though, when the series made it all the way to XI? There’s more than meets the eye with this CD, and I must find out. I must!

*clickity-clickty clack; searching Lord Discogs ain’t wack*

Well I’ll be darned. The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog was indeed a separate release, put out on Fax +49-69/450464 reissue sublabel Ambient World. And as it came out in 2002, there was only eight volumes of Dark Side Of The Moog available anyway. This… also means that I now must review this CD as its own entity, but out of alphabetical order since it’s contained within this first box set. My OCD is sending conflicting demands.

Charmingly, it opens with a bit of dialog from Robert Moog himself, offering an introduction to The Dark Side Of The Moog, plus his email address or some reason. This was used in the fifth album of the series, and has now thusly ruined the surprise for the next review. Thanks, MIG!

Only a three minute synthy piece from Wish You Were There makes the cut for this Dark Side Of The Moog mega-showcase, but A Saucerful Of Secrets gets a whopping fifteen minutes plucked from its lengthy runtime. Fortunately, it’s the best fifteen minutes of that session, starting with energetic techno before heading into another synth solo from Schulze. Part III and Part IV of Phantom Heart Brother shows up, and if you can’t remember which those were, um… it’s the electro piece, and the synth heavy techno piece. Three Pipers At The Gates Of Dawn features Part VII and VIII, a short drone portion followed by another techno work with Laswell Bass (Ace Track, remember?). And as for the remaining tracks, I’ll tackle them when I come to them properly. Y’know, spoilers and all.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook featuring Bill Laswell - The Dark Side Of The Moog IV

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1996/2016

Mr. Kuhlmann worked with dozens of musicians in his time, but only a few did he continuously pair up with. Naturally Klaus Schulze is one such individual, otherwise we wouldn’t be diving into a twelve volume series called The Dark Side Of The Moog right now. Move D. (David Moufang) was another one, though the bulk of their collaborations took place in the new millennium. Then there’s Bill Laswell, who’s worked with so many musicians (just, so many…), a couple sessions with The Namlookian One was a no-brainer. I’ve already talked about their Psychonavigation work, and between that and their Outland side-project, they racked up eleven albums total, most produced before the year 2000. Seems natural then, that Mr. Laswell would get himself in on those Dark Side Of The Moog sessions while hanging out at Namlook’s studio. Why absolutely these modern Berlin-School works could use some heavy dub bass action. It’s, like, old-school meets new-school, with a dash of middle-school thrown in! Yeah, I know, Laswell’s more known for his ‘90s work than ‘80s material (including the project Material), but that darn tagline got stuck in my head, and damned if I don’t get it out!

Having ol’ Bill onboard makes for a radically different album in the Dark Side Of The Moog canon, with less adherence to Schulze’s approach to music craft. In fact, this album is remarkably uptempo considering the players involved – even Namlook’s take on trance was slowly on the wane by ’96. For sure Three Pipers At The Gates of Dawn (Part I) has the hallmarks of a typical Dark Side Of The Moog outing, with minimalist sounds and effects floating about. Yet there’s also a sense of urgency too, building synth strings and intermittent sci-fi noises escalating the piece’s tension.

By the time the brisk pace of Part II drops, it all feels worth the wait, a right hum-dinger of a… trance track? No, it’s not really that. For starters, it’s nearly twenty-two minutes long, and most trance just don’t do that (unless you’re Oliver Lieb). Secondly, while it has the mini-arp bassline and high-bpm, the actual kick is quite soft, leading to a rather tame rhythm section in service of the synth and dub action going on throughout. And it seems each contributor to this piece has their own moment to shine, whether it’s Namlook doing his sci-fi effects thing, Schulze doing his synth solo thing (a charming, whistling number), or Laswell adding extra *oomph* to the bottom end without ever overshadowing the others.

Part II really is the main talking point on here, but here’s a few additional notes. Most of the remaining tracks (nine in total) are brief, droney, experimental pieces, few breaching three minutes in length. Part V does a little techno for its short running time, and hey, Laswell’s bass! Part VIII explores the idea more, over eight minutes worth. It’s cool, but nothing we haven’t heard from the players involved before. Man, that Part II tho’… hoo!

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog III

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1995/2016

Wait a minute! How are we even getting these Dark Side Of The Moog reissues in the first place? The status of Pete Namlook’s label remains in limbo, so many ancient artifacts from the Fax +49-69/450464 archives long out of print. Even Ambient World, a sublabel specifically set-up for reissues of popular Fax+ releases, couldn’t keep their stock in for long, and they reissued Mr. Kuhlmann’s collaborations with Klaus Schulze twice! You might even still find some floating around, though not at any decent price. And as both prints closed shop after Namlook’s untimely death, everything from the Fax+ archives seems sealed away until the estate sorts things out with their respective owners. It’s not like all those original contributors to Fax+ can come knocking for their music back, can they?

Apparently so, though it’s not surprising that someone who’s been in the business as long as Schulze would have equal share in the Dark Side Of The Moog albums. And it just so happens ol’ Klaus has a reissue deal with MIG (Made In Germany Music), a relatively new print that deals almost exclusively with reissues. After perusing their wares, it seems the name’s a misnomer, with plenty American, UK, and other European groups getting attention from MIG, though I’m hard pressed to recognize much of them. Ian Hunter, Weather Report, Stray Cats… but yeah, there’s definitely a skewing towards German krautrock here, what with bands like Novalis, Epitaph, and of course Mr. Schulze himself making up the bulk. And if MIG is in the process of making all of Klaus’ music available again in the modern era, it’s only proper that the Dark Side Of The Moog sessions should receive the same treatment.

The Dark Side Of The Moog III marked a change in how Namlook and Schulze approached the project: each segment is are now indexed normally! Yep, no more five-minute Parts, where differing pieces bleed into each other and the like. Naturally that defeats the notion of playing these as a single composition of music, but even here the duo are showing signs of growing bored of that angle. Whereas Wish You Were There and A Saucerful Of Ambience generally flowed from beginning to end, each Part of Phantom Heart Brother is clearly different from what came before. Part 1 lasts over eighteen minutes, mostly consisting of corny ‘spo-O-o-O-ky’ modulating synth sounds, and entirely skippable. Part 2 keeps those sounds going for a lengthy fade-out, but vintage Berlin-School synths coupled with spacey guitar drastically changes the album’s tone. Following that, Part 3 abandons ‘70s sounds altogether, going for minimalist abstract electro as a ten-minute lead into the requisite trance cut in Part 4, and not a half-bad offering at that. Finally, Part 5 goes pure ambient, though in that distinct spacey Fax+ style Namlook made his own, before a little kraut guitar action is added to the mix. This is undoubtedly what everyone figured a Schulze-Namlook pairing would produce. We’re finding a groove now, friends.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog II

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1995/2016

Make no mistake: Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook roamed drastically different orbits in the early ‘90s, in no small part from being of two different generations of synth music. One was studious, old-school, and strictly for the art houses, consumed by egg-heads of electronic music. The other had his finger on the pulse of clubland, offering up energetic dance beats alongside his calmer, spacier moments enjoyed by knackered punters. Most attempts at melding the disparate scenes were met with indifference at best, failure at worst. And while I’ve no doubt Namlook took some inspiration from Schulze’s work, plenty other Berlin-School pioneers were still active should he have gained the courage to contact any of them. But why would any of them bother with some ‘rave’ guy in the first place?

Turns out ol’ Klaus did, detecting kinship with Mr. Kuhlmann after hearing his work on the second Air album. How the aged German came into contact with the younger German’s work was almost incidental, a brief meeting from a mutual associate, and somehow from that Schulze took in enough of a sampling of Namlook’s work to request an exchange of ideas, if not a full-on collaboration. Remarkable, considering Klaus was notorious for keeping his synth work a pure expression of his own muse with little outside input. It led to many stunning works, true, but also a fair bit of unfiltered waffle too. Hey, sounds like the bulk of Namlook’s discography as well! Clearly, a match made in stars of heaven.

The Dark Side Of The Moog II picks up where the first left off, expanding on the single-track concept with Schulze’s sounds leading for much of the proceedings. As before, the album is indexed with five minute parts, expanded by two additional tracks as we have ten extra minutes in this piece (A Saucerful Of Ambience). Again, these aren’t demarcations for any particular transition within this sixty-minute long composition, which is just as well because this is one tedious, meandering sixty-minute long composition.

The first twenty minutes is all sound-effects and field recordings, dominated by twitchy mechanical crickets, and intermittently pierced by distant gongs. It paints an outwordly vista, some landscape at the edge of an alien forest, but man does it ever go on and on. Around Part V, sci-fi pings, bleeps, and paarps provide an interlude of sorts, and then it’s back to sound effects for a bit longer (yay running waters). Finally, some half-hour in, we get actual melody, a rather typical offering of Berlin-School synth noodling, but such a welcome respite after so much abstract dithering. Namlook’s ear for trance takes a turn around Part IX, but it doesn’t last long, and we’re back to grand synth solos and field recordings for the final sixteen minutes.

Apparently both Schulze and Namlook didn’t want these efforts to sound too ‘70s, but A Saucerful Of Ambience is about as old-school as these Dark Side Of The Moogs go. They’re still getting a handle on this, methinks.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1994/2016

Gathering up the many, many, many volumes of Pete Namlook and Klaus Schulze’s epic collaboration series The Dark Side Of The Moog was never much of a priority. For sure if I saw one on the cheap, I’d snatch that sucker up, but odds of that happening with any release from Fax +49-69/450464 or its reissue sub-label Ambient World are absurdly low. On the other hand, a spiffy box set that does all that grueling work for me? Well shit, son, sign me up for that! And it’s what MIG done did, releasing all eleven volumes of The Dark Side Of The Moog in three bundles, plus a few bonuses for good measure. Though I remained blasé about the concept of Old Berlin-School teaming up with New Berlin-School, I’d be a fool to not spring for at least a couple of these boxes. Naturally, that now means I must review Every. Single. CD. Time for a serious knowledge drop in the project, then, but self-imposed word count runs short, so let’s get into The Dark Side Of The Moog, volume one. Eh? Of course the first wasn’t given a proper numerical demarcation. Like ol’ Pete and Klaus had any idea this would become such a long lasting thing.

If anything, Mr. Kuhlmann seems a little star-struck in his contributions for their initial session. He freely admitted as such, encouraging Mr. Schulze to do what he do best – coerce musical exotica out of crusty analog gear – and he’d work around that. This wasn’t so much about bringing one of the O.G.s of synth music into the hip ‘90s, but exploring what ‘70s music could do given two decades of technological advancements. This does lend to a rather freeform approach to songcraft, but that’s always been the Berlin School methodology regardless. If anything, it had lost its way as many synth wizards looked at making bank during the ‘80s once their sounds caught on with mainstream crowds. Those that didn’t adapt their craft to pop production or movie scores were left in relative obscurity, only later rediscovered by meticulous archivists of synthesizer chronology. Dear God, is this ever turning into a fancy-schmancy history lesson. Back to music.

The Dark Side Of The Moog (Da’ Kickoff) contains ten tracks, each titled Wish You Were There - yeah, the Pink Floyd puns can’t stop, won’t stop. And calling these individual pieces tracks is a misnomer, everything equally split five minutes apiece, save a whopping six minute finale. There are definite segments throughout, as Klaus moves through spacey kraut, sci-fi effects, and grand displays of modern classical synths, but none of the indexes mark any particular transition. About the mid-point, an electro beat emerges, leaves for some more experimental wibbling, and finally we’re treated to a little classic trance business. Not much, mind, but Namlook’s presence is definitely felt in this final stretch, whereas most of the preceding portions he sat back letting Schulze strut his stuff. They’d get better at blending their sounds.

Dronny Darko - Neuroplasticity

Cryo Chamber: 2016

Dronny Darko’s the sort of alias I really want to make snickering remarks over, but damn if the man behind it doesn’t deny me that chance. His works are just so interesting, at least on a conceptual level. Obviously his pairing with protoU on Earth Songs was pure catnip to my cosmic triggers, and it seems his points of inspiration show no bounds. His first album on Cryo Chamber, Outer Tehom, dealt with the occult side of dark ambient’s oeuvre, and he’s explored various other themes on netlabel releases for Petroglyph Music and DNA Production. A misconceived origin here, a polar night on Titan there, to say nothing of spending one-thousand years in cryosleep. Dark ambient sorts sure love their cryosleep. Are many of them insomniacs, the scientifically induced slumber their only hope of a restful respite from the harrowing conscious state defined by neurosis? Or maybe it’s just a real cool sounding collection of syllables.

Still, a wandering muse doesn’t always lead to the most promising of pastures, especially for one seemingly intent on challenging himself as Dronny Darko does. His second LP for Cryo Chamber, Neuroplasticity, foregoes almost all of dark ambient’s conventional spaces in favor of something you might find on Mille Plateaux or Raster-Noton: experimental, minimalist abstraction, muted atmosphere, and empty drone. Right, some of this label’s producers indulges in that last one too, but Mr. Darko takes his material closer to the realms of musique concrete than anything remotely typical for Cryo Chamber. The opening track, Mirror Neurons, has echoing woodblocks plonking about as though we’re watching an avante-garde film detailing the finer processes of bio-chemical reactions, soon followed by flittering electrical pulses flashing across colorless spaces. In fact, that’s exactly what this is, if the little promo video for this track at the Bandcamp site is anything to go by. Oh yeah, have I mentioned each Cryo Chamber release has a nifty promo video? Worth checking out, if you need some context for this music.

No, wait, ‘music’ is not what this is in the slightest. While drone ambient is often atonal regardless, ol’ Dronny doesn’t give us any wisp of a note in these five tracks. Plazma Lake is fifteen minutes of being submerged in thick viscous substance, occasional crackles of brain pulses and a muted heartthrob your only markers of sound. Electrical Membrane spends six minutes shooting garbled frequencies at your senses before fading out in mechanical drone. Circuits sounds like you’re gestating in a test-tube, being nurtured and cared for by scientists twisting and abusing the laws of nature. Ion Voltage frees you from whatever cybernetic madness has thus far assaulted your senses, with a hard cut ending the album abrupt and complete.

Neuroplasticity isn’t just abstract experimentation for its own sake – the album does have a journey of sorts going for it. Damn though, it’s unlike anything I’ve heard on Cryo Chamber yet. Cheers for taking a chance in exploring the desolate mindscape of a Borg drone.

Autistici - Temporal Enhancement

Dronarivm: 2015

Autistici is someone I regret coming into so cold. As with many larks and flights of music buying fancy, I picked this up with no prior knowledge of the artist and no checks of prior material. I can never tire of that thrill in random chance purchases, browsing through shops where cover art is your only clues of what’s within (erm, and good sorting). And I cannot deny some of its present with Bandcamp pages, having a label’s output nicely laid out for your perusal convenience. It’s definitely led me to a few splurges these past couple years, content in the knowledge my monies are feeding a more direct route to the artist than most options (or, in the case of used shop shopping, not at all). While neither Autistici nor the label Dronarivm are names I’ve any familiarity with, their association with others that I do know was enough for the blind pickup.

All this, of course, is just a roundabout way of making excuses for whatever gaps of knowledge I’ll undoubtedly commit in the next few hundred words. For Autistici, or David Newman in the Sheffield phone directory, strikes me as an artist that requires a proper full-discography plunge, if only to understand how his craft has evolved over time. Temporal Enhancement is his fifth album on a fifth label, despite the fact he has his own print (Audiobulb Records). His approach to music is less musicality, and more explorations of singular sounds, going for pure abstraction of field recordings, noises, and manipulations of natural tones. His music can be quite soothing, melodic, and calming drone, but he’d just as soon go noisy and harsh with a cacophony of experimental percussion. Taking in quick Spotify sampling, the one clear consistency through all of Autistici’s work I noticed is never resting on singular ideas for long, elements coming and going even if it creates a complete tonal clash within the track itself.

So too is the case with Temporal Enhancement, a collection of six tracks, most averaging four-to-five minutes. There’s also a nine-plus minute closer, and a whopping seventeen-minute composition smack in the middle, and as good a summation of the album as any.Habituation Of The Heart darkly drones along for a significant amount of time, ghostly voices and electronic sparks creating an oddly spacious yet claustrophobic setting traditional industrial sorts would approve of. Just when creaking, contorting sounds make the atmosphere almost unbearable, a release, with gentle heartbeat pulsing through soft white noise, distant lullaby and children at play easing you out.

Temporal Enhanncement as a whole plays out like this, abrasive sonic assaults making up the first half, with gentler, dubbed-out works making up the backend. Mr. Newman described this album as an exploration of the human condition, and with titles like Opened Up Too Quickly, Thinking Before Feeling, and The Grotesque Physicality Of Waiting, I’d say he sums things up just fine, if in a rather over-stimulated fashion at times. Mm, Ritalin with a Xanax chaser.

Dao Da Noize - Kalam

Psychonavigation Records: 2012

Thirty albums in a half-decade? Hell, that's just what Lord Discogs lists as official LPs. Another twenty ‘Miscellaneous’ items fill out Dao Da Noize's discography thus far, mostly tapes and extremely-limited CDr offerings. Oddly, Kalam is included in this category, though I've no idea why. Pyschonavigation Records isn't some ultra-obscure print operating out of a Winnebago in the New Mexico desert. It's a semi-obscure label with a Dublin office drawing in ambient techno producers and IDM-leaning artists like a '90s throwback singularity. Yeah, Kalam is also a limited-run CD, but so are ninety-percent of niche genre releases now.

Clearly then, the man behind Dao Da Noize, Artem Pismenetskii, is something of a Merzbow or Muslimegauze sort, an endless source of noisy experimental music. Glancing through what Lord Discogs has on his releases (you just know there’s more thus far not entered), he has an interest in sounds from across Asia. Early work from the ye’ olde year of 2011 featured quite a few Japanese inspired productions, with a slow sojourn towards the West as time’s passed. Say, maybe he’s retracing the ancient Silk Road like Kitaro! He's released on tons of different labels too: Dark Meadow Recordings, Palemoon Productions, 4iB Records, Trap Door Tapes, Vomit Bucket Productions, Shit Noise Records, Fuck The Industry, Maniacal Hatred, Autistic Campaign, Sincope, Stront, Smell The Stench, Genetic Trance... I swear Dao Da Noize releases one thing on some backwater print, then moves on to another. Who knows how Psychonavigation Records fits into this. Maybe label head Keith Downey is a fan.

By the by, that Muslimgauze namedrop is an intentional, if awkward segue into Kalam, Mr. Pismenetskii stating it a deliberate tribute to the late Bryn Jones (he of an insane amount of output within a fifteen year timespan). Though Muslimgauze wasn’t Muslim, he did focus his muse on the sounds of Arabia (especially Palestine), overdubbing samples and recordings of the region into all manner of crusty beats, layered drone, noisy effects, and Middle Eastern tributes.

As such, Dao Da Noize gets right into it with Kalam I, tablas clunking away, distant chants in the background, and an ear-piercing attack of white noise distortion and bass dub bombs overwhelming your senses. Guess that’s what it’s like living in a war torn region. Kalam II, at twenty minutes in length, reuses many of the same elements as the first, though takes its time in developing, mostly going for dubbed-out trippiness for a while before bringing the tablas back in. The finish is more urgent in pacing, but subdued in tone. A shorter Kalam III throws in more industrial noise and children laughter, then Kalam IV grows dark and moody, very little percussion used. It’s also twenty-five minutes long, so if you like your eerie ethnic dub, you’ll dig this one.

I was surprised I liked Kalam as much as I did. Hell, when I first threw it on, I had no idea what to expect. Such fun adventures of discovery, these label splurges are.

Brian Wilson - Smile

Nonesuch: 2004

Smile was meant to be Brian Wilson's magnum opus, a career defining album that would elevate Americana songcraft above anything those UK invasion bands offered. He had the creative drive, the resources (studio equipment access, peerless harmony group in The Beach Boys), and the benchmark to top with Pet Sounds. Unfortunately, he didn't have a Paul, John, or even Keith on his side, and when The Beatles came out with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, poor ol' Brian realized he couldn’t top that ridiculously successful album. Despite having blueprints laid out, and even recording a few would-be singles that would feature in Smile, his efforts seemed so easily trumped by the Liverpool Four, it was more than he could take. Nervous breakdown beckoned, much of Smile abandoned, and one of rock music's most famous non-albums entered the realm of tantalizing “what if?” discourse.

And so it looked to remain as such, B. Wilson's mental acuity taking years upon decades to find its way out of grim-dark murk. Perseverance paid off though, eventually finding it within himself to write new music without the crushing pressure of critical and commercial success. Good thing too, because much of his output during the ‘90s wasn’t overly memorable. Old time fans supported him, but folks suspected his creative spark that propelled The Beach Boys to the top of the pop charts had long since faded. Just as well, Wilson truly no longer made for those ‘90s times anyway.

Then out of the blue, Brian announced that he’d finish his super Smile project after all, as it was intended way back in the ‘60s. Well shit, son (dad?), that’s awesome. Is there really any interest left for this album though? It’s a new century, a new millennium, and most ultra-fans of The Beach Boys had already pieced together finished songs and studio scraps for their own Smile bootlegs. Hell, Brian’s voice had considerably aged, and good luck getting the remaining actual Beach Boys into the studio after the bitter estrangement all those years had festered between the two parties.

All those concerns were for naught, the finished Smile a wonderful, amazing album from front to back. Essentially three parts, the first captures the nostalgic memories of carefree, youthful summers, especially while vacationing in touristy American locales, with Heroes And Villains the main attraction here. The second part goes more wistful and reflective, the big song off here being dreamy Surf’s Up. And the final part gets goofy and experimental; some pieces mere snippets of sound effects before changing gears to something else. Like, hot damn, that transition from the fire-storm of Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow into the desolate In Blue Hawaii! Then to cap the whole experience off with the mighty Good Vibrations, you can’t help but want to stand and cheer for Brian Wilson, for seeing his vision come into being, triumphant in all the adversity he’d faced. Plus, y’know, there’s just a ton of great music all throughout Smile too.