Juan Pablo seldom posts notes or factoids regarding his releases, such things typically left blank on his Bandcamp pages. And I understand why, the music mostly self-explanatory by title alone. Here he was inspired by micro-fauna. This one by space. That one by ancient peoples. Another of space. Sometimes just a free-flowing composition with no particular aim beyond enjoying the process itself. Why bog the listener down with paragraphs of copy when such things are generally moot? It's clear Mr. Giacovino wears his artist's heart on his sleeve – what you hear is pretty much what he intends, no need for obscure, abstract concepts guiding you along the way.
So I was a little intrigued by the fact he included some liner notes for these Jamming Caravan releases. It was clear they were outside his usual norm, cover art featuring images of gear rather than naturalistic settings. Apparently he was just having fun with a few of his synths and such, nothing directly inspiring their use beyond whatever sounds he could make at the time. Maybe not the most luring concept among his many releases, but when you clearly have little filter in what gets uploaded to your webspace, what care is there in why the art was created beyond for its own sake. Surely some folks will like it, if not for the music itself, than for the gear used. Gear hounds love hearing their preferred tech-specs in action!
Oh, I guess I should actually mention what Juan Pablo used in these sessions, since he was so keen on sharing that info. One (1) Korg NTS1. One (1) Korg Volca fm. A Pocket Operator Pro 32 Tonic. Some NTS1 effects. “Many Other FM Virtual Synths.” How cool is that, eh? Eh? Okay, I can't fake that funk, my knowledge of gear rather limited – never got into it because good Lord is that ever an expensive hobby. I'm sure there's some folks reading this who'll be all like, “Pft, what amateur hour kiddie-toys this be, harrumph harrumph”, but scene snobs exist everywhere, no matter your niche interests. Let them be, and have fun with the toys and tools you enjoy.
And as for that all-important musical result of all this jamming? The first two Caravans feature two tracks apiece, each breaching half an hour in length (save Jamming Caravan 2, running a svelte twenty-five minutes). Yeah, these are jams alright, mostly ambient noodling with light pulsing melodies and sparse rhythms. Vintage Fax+ stuff, if you get my drift. It's pleasant enough as background music, but in being so freeform in craft, will likely only hold your attention intermittently before fading off again. The third session, Live At Lofi Temple, at least breaks things up into four parts (most lasting about a dozen minutes), each exploring different facets of the same basic musical motif. Doesn't hurt these lean more into psy-chill and dub than the lengthier outings, always good for keeping the reptile brain entertained, a fussy one to please.
So I went on a small trip that I want to share some pics of but I've discontinued the use of the one platform that I typically did so on. What do? Oh yeah, I have an actual blog, that thing lots of people used to use before social media drew everyone away. I think some folks still use them as such but I get it, the allure of having more eyes approving of your life style. Well, nuts to that. May as well use the platform I've basically made my content little corner of the internet. Don't worry, this will still primarily be a music blog. Going forward though, I'll occasionally break from the routine, should some life events warrant it.
Before I post the actual pics, some context. I flew north back to my hometown, which may not sound all that exciting, until you remember where I live. Yes, the Pacific Northwest, and to get to my hometown from my current town, you can either fly 750km, take a ferry of slightly longer length, or drive 1,500km. Why is it twice as far to drive? Surely you'd just hug the coast, right? No, because there's a huge range of massive, f'-off mountains between, with no hope of ever just cruising through them.
What massive, f'-off mountains might look like.
Believe me when I say nothing makes you appreciate just how untamed and impenetrable so much of my 'backyard' is when you fly over these rugged, jagged, glaciated alpines than having a crystal clear day to bask in their grandiosity. I think I caught glimpse of them once before in my youth, but so many plane trips along the coast were covered by our usual assortment of thick, rainy clouds obscuring all but the tallest peaks. I feel fortunate that this trip afforded me the opportunity to see them in all their splendour, with skies so free of clouds, I could see the Tweedsmuir lakes in the eastern distance. Couldn't really take pictures of them through a tiny plane window though, hence these stock photos standing in.
Puny humans in the face of inhospitable terrain.
Anyhow, having arrived in Prince Rupert, I felt an itch, an urge. The town is nestled on an island between its harbour and a mountain of its own, a long ridge with a peak of about 700m high. Clearly a mere foothill compared to the average 3000m behemoths that are scattered about the Coast Range, but a twinge of wanderlust pricked at me. That while I'd likely never climb to the top, say, Mt. Waddington, surely I could do Mt. Hays.
What a Mt. Hays might look like.
I'd been to the top of that mountain before, but by vehicle up the old mountain road, or taken a gondola up when there was still a tourist and ski station at the summit. I'd never hiked up it, only the various trails scattered about its base. I felt like this was something I had to do before I left, a last little bit of unfinished business where I spent most of my youth. So I did.
It was something I really should have put more forethought into than just doing on a whim. First, I was going by myself, which most hikers will say is already irresponsible, especially in an area that's rather difficult to access from civilization. The weather was nice though, if cold, so surely some other hikers would be out on this day. Save a lone jogger passing me twice (!), I was utterly alone.
I also quickly realized that this was no casual jaunt through a city park, the incline coming immediate and challenging. The whole path was 4km long, just to get to a 500m 'first' peak – I'd walked maybe twenty minutes when I was already feeling that burn. After about the first kilometre, I was at my highest heartbeat level. I thought of a friend of mine who'd gone into cardiac arrest doing the Grouse Grind, a challenging hike in Vancouver. Paramedics couldn't reach him in time, despite people being with him. And here I was, climbing the backside of a steep-ass ridge, by myself, my own heart-rate maxing out, with no one to watch out for me. Or what if I twisted an ankle, blew out a knee, slipped on some rubble? Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.
A relief map of the path I took.
Yet, there was something uniquely alluring about the path this day. Rainforest hikes are always special, thick with foliage, seeing nature at some of its most feral – and British Columbia is filled with them. On this day though, it seemed even the mighty Pacific rainforests were tamed by the cold that had settled in. Not a biting, brittle freeze, but enough to put nearly everything in stasis. The various mountain run-off streams that dotted the trail were all frozen solid, yet no snow lay upon the ground. The usual chatter of forest fauna, dead silent. It was a realm locked between its natural state and wintery smothering. I didn't want to go back so soon, and the only way further was up. So up I continued.
Eventually, I came upon something I hadn't counted on, as you couldn't see it from the ground below: a snow line. That delicate barrier where the surrounding air is no longer warm enough to melt whatever lay upon the ground. Where you transition from just a regular ol' hiking trail (challenging though it was) to a realm reserved only for the hardcore. The path carried further, but I wondered if that was enough. I hadn't planned to go this far, much less by myself. I was getting seriously out-of-reach now. Plus, I saw large paw prints in the snow. I knew wolves were known to wander these paths, folks discouraged from bringing pet dogs because of it. How fresh were these tracks? They looked fairly recent, little erosion around their imprint, but given how mild the local weather had been in recent days, that didn't prove anything. I could have turned back then, more than having sated whatever need my wanderlust craved. Still I continued up.
What a snow line might look like.
Some twenty minutes later, the trail finally came to its natural end. A lone bench marked its final destination, with a view that made it all worth it. The Rupert Harbour as I'd long remembered it. The spit of land that's actually part of the mainland. The Metlekatla village clinging to the inside of that peninsula. Beyond it, across high seas, the Dunbas Islands group, the most northern cluster of Canadian islands in the open Pacific Ocean. And, if you look carefully, in the distant mist, the tall peaks of the most southern tip of Alaska's Prince Of Wales Island.
What a view from near the top of a mountain might look like.
Granted, it wasn't quite the 'flying over endless f'-off mountains' kind of a view. Even from that vantage point though, you recognize just how much of nature still claims dominion over large swaths of this planet. That despite our best efforts, there's places that we will likely never conquer, that will remain unspoiled, and are privileged to at least glimpse upon these realms should we be adventurous enough to seek them out.
Okay, then. Cool. Now, about getting back down that damn mountain. Oh dear, this is gonna' do a number on my knees and quads, isn't it...? (yep!)
While getting these old random eurodance singles is fun in of itself, there honestly isn't much to talk about regarding the music. You know all the major hits – if not the original, then some interpolation of them – and the bulk of other releases were often rip-offs of those. Not that its a bad thing or anything, popular genres spawning copycats looking to cash-in on hot trends a common consequence of music becoming popular. And for the Italians, anthem house with big hooks and catchy choruses were all the rage in the wake of Black Box' global success.
And so it goes with this particular single from Trancex called It's Gonna Be Alright. There isn't anything terribly unique about it, but dang, if that riff doesn't just instantly bury itself into your brain. The vocal sample is fairly generic too, but doesn't have to be anything special either, just enough to have you humming it along with the main lead when it drops. And yes, this is one of those tracks that technically 'drops', pulling everything back after each session with the main hook for another build. Early '90s anthem house at its most basic but also most efficient.
Remixes, then. That's why I wanted this, hoping for some long-forgotten nugget of vintage dance music gold. Yeah, not gonna' find that here. There's an extended Trancex Mix, and a 'deeper' Organ Sex Mix. The latter is almost entirely pointless, the whole point of this track being the big, obvious anthem and having none of it there. Still, that little tease of a build at the end, mix that into the actual hook of the original, could be a crowd pleaser.
So I didn't get anything terribly exciting with It's Gonna Be Alright beyond face value. Yet I'm clearly giddy about something over this single, so what is it? As seems more the case now, it's learning about the producers behind the music, and in this case we've hit... well, not a gold mine, but some interesting factoids.
Two Italians are credited here, Graziano Fanelli and Pieradis Rossini. The former seems to have mostly worked in tandem with the latter, whom has worked on a lot of things over the years, not to mention running the label DJ Movement. They were behind tons of eurodance, hard dance, happy hardcore and probably vocal trance too. Cool, but cooler are the projects Fenelli worked on before this.
For instance, he was behind the original incarnation of Cappella. Yes, that Cappella, which makes sense when you hear this, anthem house stylings and all. However, Pieradis left the project before it globally took off with Take Me Away and U Got 2 Know (working on Trancex, most likely). Still, another item he'd worked on prior gave him a brush with 'greatness', called My Love as Collapse. If you're at all familiar with Sasha sets from the early '90s, you know this track. Mr. Rossini was remarkably adaptable with the times.
I honestly can't remember what prompted me to scope out Scott Grooves again. Though I've liked the music I've heard from him, he hasn't been high on my 'must get everything!' list of artists. Whenever I felt an itch for Detroit tech-house, I tended to drift towards DJ 3000 and his Motech roster. Granted, I haven't really returned to them either for a spell, so maybe I was just feeling fallow for anything in this vein. Could be, or perhaps the cover art of this EP caught my eye when it popped up in my Bandcamp mailing list that continuously sends me notifications.
It's definitely more distinctive among the rest of the Natural Midi releases, a portrait of the man himself drawn by “Chris The Artist”. Most items from this label tend to be minimalist and vinyl friendly, easily ignored when sifting through endless emails. With its slightly cybernetic style, however, I can imagine ITMS drawing me in for a closer look. At least, its the only reason I can think of why I checked it out. Either that, or I just had a random thought of “I wonder what Scott Grooves has been up to?” and this was his latest release at the time. Yes, that long ago now. Time flies when your rate of reviews slows down.
I also get a sense of Mr. Grooves releasing something a little more definitive here than his usual output. The chap's put out a lot, much of it serving more as techno tools or artistic indulgences. Right before this, for instance, he release a four-part mini-series of dialog pieces called Spoken Art, not to mention some forty-five tracks initially exclusive to tape called Machinik. He can be a bit all over the place, is what I'm saying, which is wonderful for satisfying one's muse, but be a bit daunting for those just looking to dabble in a discography. So if going to the source isn't quite enough for you (re: scoping out Pieces Of A Dream), then a tidy EP offering a potential look into his sound seems appropriate enough.
Though honestly, I'm not so sure how accurate this sound is to the grander Scott Grooves lexicon. I've heard some deep, minimalist material from him before, but opener Cookies & Cream is real deep, very loopy, barely bloopy, and just a little synth-sinewy. Fine as a first track, I guess, but doesn't really get the mood movin' either. Gettin Started is aptly titled, then, as the pace picks up, even if we're still in relatively deep Detroit vibes. H.O.W. (Horses On Woodward) has more a shuffly, suttery rhythm going for it, and at eight-plus minutes long, more free-flowing jam with the sparse synths used. The vibe's just as deep too, but feels better earned than the previous two. Meanwhile, closer Driven is a fairly straight-forward loopy rhythm workout – nothing too fancy, but if you needed a simple transition track in your Detroit techno set, this will do the trick.
One of the best 'sophomore slump' albums you'll ever hear. Okay, I can't authentically back that up, as I'll never hear every record with that label. Heck, there might be some items within my own collection that are better examples of 'sophomore slumps that are not', though I'm hard-pressed to think of any in my hip-hop selections. Maybe something among all the Wu-Tang solo outings? No, Beneath The Surface doesn't count, no matter how much everyone forgets GZA had an album before Liquid Swords. Raekwon's Immobilarity would though, even if I'm one of the few folks on the planet who think so.
General consensus now goes Nas' It Was Written was destined for initial disappointment no matter what he did. Like so many New York City rap debuts of the time, Illmatic was about as perfect a record as anyone could hope for, except those all-important sales figures. Everyone knew Mr. Jones was one of the region's premier lyricists (getting a DJ Premier co-sign didn't hurt), and with so much hype behind him, the pressure to actually shoot for something chart friendly had to be immeasurable. After all, if Biggie showed it could be done, why not everyone else? So long as the record offers a few token jams for the underground heads, let's have fun with 'cover raps' (Street Dreams aping Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams) and sexy-sweet come-ons for the ladies (Black Girl Lost).
You'd think threading the line between opportunistic hits and 'thug rap' would make for a disjointed record, and that's what most critics felt at the time. “Pick a lane,” they complained, again somehow forgetting you could be both with credibility intact. For whatever reason though, working so heavily with future hitmakers Trackmasterz left a sour taste in a lot of mouths, pronouncing the album a sophomore slump despite strong sales and standout tracks like If I Ruled The World with Lauryn Hill (herself on the verge of super-stardom). I guess folks felt it was too much of a side of hip-hop they didn't like, or not enough of the other, and simply dismissed it without much thought. At least, until they went back to these records with that perfect hindsight vision.
Because had this been the debut, and Illmatic just some underground tapes only the hardest of the hardcore knew about, I've no doubt It Was Written would have been considered an instant classic as well. Maybe not quite at the level of Ready To Die or Enter The Wu-Tang, but surely talked about alongside The Infamous and Reasonable Doubt. Instead, it lies in the shadow of a record damn near everyone does, as if there can only be One (1) Nas album worth discussion. With how many dope LPs he's release long after, however, that discourse has shifted. Critical revaluation of It Was Written is now concluding that in providing such a solid, wide range of hip-hop styles among its thirteen tracks, the record is 'good, actually,' and most definitely not a cliched sophomore slump.
This has been a surprisingly difficult compilation to tackle. Not so much for detailing the music within, fairly straight-forward for a latter-day Ultimae release. Not even for what I intend to say about it, the particulars again simple enough. No, the difficulty lay in sitting down and listening to the damn thing for a deeper analysis. A sort of... trepidation, if you will, in where my headspace might go as it plays. Just the title alone - Isolated - invokes feelings of being cut off and distant from your fellow man. And hey, if I'm in that specific kind of mood, I'll fire up a Cryo Chamber CD, right? Absolutely, but I want a little more from my Ultimae releases, a chance to get swept up in widescreen sonics, even if the scenery tends to be more desolate than years past.
Still, can't fault the label for putting out a compilation such as this. It's been an avenue Mr. Villuis has long been fascinated by, finally reaching its creative high-point with the Aes Dana album (a) period. May as well bring in a bunch of other fellow ambient drone and downtempo dub artists to explore it further, though having psy-chill journeyman DJ Samsara in for the compiling duties is an interesting choice. No matter how hard he tries, Vincent will never be shed of his former links to the psy scene.
So I throw Isolated on, and the first track is Solitude from ASC. Hey, James Clements making his debut with Ultimae! That's pretty dope in of itself, his style of ambient more than suitable for their 'panoramic music' manifesto – only took a decade-plus to get there. Following that, there's many familiar names making up the track list: Erot, Martin Nonstatic, Miktek, plus Aes Dana himself.
And, almost immediately, I find myself drifting off, overcome by an overwhelming urge to hibernate. Is it the music that's doing this, or am I just feeling the depths of winter doldrums, the bitter cold even reaching my relatively temperate region of the Pacific northwest? Almost certainly the latter, but man, Isolated isn't helping either. Do you now see why its been a hard one to get into? I just can't sit still with it long enough without crashing out!
It's not all minimalist synth pads and ultra-deep dub tones, Claudio PRC's Arctic Movement offering a lone 'uptempo' track even if it sounds just as sparse as everything else on Isolated. Elsewhere, Aes Dana and Miktek's Lavender brings more skittery beatsmith, the sort of style you'd probably more quickly associate with ASC, if you were doing a blind guess of who's tracks are who's on here. Beyond that, its mostly glitchy downbeat and expansive drone tones, the usual fare from Ultimae. And as always, it sounds lovely when you have the right set of gear to play it on (super-deluxe home studio, Sennheiser headphones, etc.), but loses a lot of depth on lesser equipment (earbuds, laptop speakers, etc.). Basically music best served when in exsquisite isolation.
She seems to be an invisible u-ni-verse She reaches in, grabs hold of your soul She seems to be an invisible un-ni-verse The gravity force slowly tears you apart
Mm, no, doesn't quite work out like I thought it would. You know how it goes though. An idea pops in your head, it germinates for a while, contorting into something that makes some kind of sense, even as an abstraction. The only way to know you might have something, however, is to actually commit to the bit, see how it plays out, where it might take you. And for whatever reason, seeing Invisible Universe constantly had me thinking about Genesis' Invisible Touch.
Not just because the two albums are side-by-side within my music library, but something else. Something interconnected. Something that just rolls off the mental tongue. I mean, it's not like I get the same synaptic response with Voyage's Invader, Hollywood Burns' Invaders, and The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die. There's gotta' be something here, between Invisible Touch and Invisible Universe. There's just gotta'!
Oh, the music itself? Well, can't make any kind of connection there. Everybody knows what Genesis' most '80s album is all about, and that's definitely not what Juan Pablo's space ambient side project is. Come to think of it, did anyone from Genesis ever do ambient music? Surly Tony Banks did at some point, being the synth guy in the band and all. His solo stuff doesn't suggest so, running the gamut of prog rock to modern classical. Maybe Peter Gabriel then, on some b-side collection? An artist as eclectic as him must have dabbled in synth doodling.
Right, Invisible Universe. There isn't too much I have to say about it, having already covered the range Mr. Giacovino typically takes his H:U:M sessions. This is basically more of that, consisting of two 'short' tracks at the start, and two very long tracks at the other end (twenty minutes and twenty-five minutes). They do that usual N:L:E 'caravan' thing of slowly building, at times hinting more melody with shimmering synth pulses, hitting a bright crescendo, but generally staying tranquil for the duration. It's all very nice but extremely familiar to my ears by now, even with the cosmic aspect of it. Can you see why I'd be more drawn to a weird tangent into a Genesis song, then? Hmm, maybe I need another go of it?
She don't like losing, this cosmic game And though she will mess up your life You'll want to explore that space just the same And now I know she has that built-in ability To take all that you see And now you're falling, falling for her Deep within her invisible u-ni-verse!
No, no, I'll get there, just give it time. I've got all the time in the world. But not all the self-imposed word count in the world. Ah well, so it goes.
Not that this is some major milestone that needs a celebratory parade marking the occasion. Indeed, all I'm doing is discontinuing the use of one more app in my life. No more momentous than switching from Spotify to Deezer, or from Xitter to Mastodon. Or heck, from MySpace to Facebook, oh so very long ago. Ah, but that's the difference in of itself, isn't it? All those switches were from one app to another offering similar services, transitions that were more about changing trends and tides.
This one's different though, Facebook having intertwined itself into significant aspects of my life with no suitable replacement emerging in its stead. Check that: there are suitable replacements, but good luck getting everyone I know still using Meta apps to jump ship with. Not that my circle of associates are terribly active on Facebook either, but that may just be a sign of social media's dwindling influence among my peers. Unless you've made it your job, the allure of broadcasting all your mundane thoughts to the world tends to taper off the older you get.
Active enough they remain though, which is what made abandoning Facebook so difficult. For sure its practical use was almost nil, blocking links back to this blog now – don't want people leaving for any reason, now would we? Didn't really need it for events promotion either, since I'm subscribed to email newsletters for the promoters I most care about. But hey, so long as I was constantly getting fed algorithmic friendly time-wasters like nostalgia triggers and cute animal vids, what harm was there staying put? Keep my feed curated so all the ugly, vile, dehumanizing slop that existed among the margins remained there, and it was all good.
Then the algorithm fed me something so profoundly ugly, vile, and sickening, it triggered me beyond the event horizon - an AI generated abomination that would have you ripping your eyes out.
As a society, we may not agree on everything, but we can all agree that tales of animal rescue warms the heart, the soul, the very fibre of our being that there remains some good in this world. Then, to see grotesque images of computerized mutations of marine animals with uncanny valley smiles, covered in clams, mussels, and barnacles, getting hosed and scrubbed by fishermen as though they're washing a car... That's when I knew. This was what the future of social media would be, especially so Meta and all its apps. The billions and billions of capital investment poured into these services, bootlicking governments for those grants, all to feed users utter swill such as this, just in the hopes of keeping you engaged a little bit longer for those ads to seep into your brain. I wanted no more part in it.
Still, though that may have been the inciting incident, something more nudged me fully out that door. For I came to that same ol' hurdle everyone still on these apps comes to: what of the connections I have? I joined Facebook fifteen years ago to create those connections in the first place, to have easy communication with those who don't live within my nearby meatspace (and even some who do). How can I just abandon those? Sure, it'd be nice if they'd join me elsewhere, but realistically, that simply won't happen. Facebook has persisted because of the ease in which it makes these connections last. The thought of severing those out of some righteous sense of morality would cause my stomach to tighten, like an unbreakable knot.
Something changed this past month though. That binding seemed to sour, curdle, the rope dissolving into room-temperature cottage cheese. Not for anything my peers were doing, but for the dawning realization that that was how these tech-bro oligarchs would maintain control over us. Manipulating our fears to their own ends. Not just through the media we consume, such propaganda easy enough to recognize. No, I'm talking about the fear of losing connections with those we care about, and what we'll put up with to maintain them, all for their own profit.
I'll never claim to have the superior high-ground in all this. Clearly I'm still beholden to some of them, continuing to use Google apps and all. I can at least make good on what I can though, and deleting Facebook from my life is one such action I have that control over. And, also, because fuck Zuckerberg.
Seems I'm not alone in this month-long rumination. Been seeing #GlobalSwitchDay trend on Mastodon this past week, so there may be more groundswell of support in abandoning tech-bro oligarch run apps than is advertised (because of course it'd be suppressed on their apps). Don't know if it'll amount to a significant change in the near future but it does show you have options, should you feel the desire to move on.
And this is the last of the Suntrip CDs among my 'I' albums. Final tally: six, which may not be that much, less than ten percent of the whole she-bang I bulk bought from the label. Sure felt like a lot though, perhaps due to having a dangling 'H' album lodged in there, or so many bunched up towards the end of this month. We're also dealing with a compilation here, which is nice, those usually offering a little more variety than your standard artist albums. Yeah, there's typically a central theme, but different muses, different gear, different approaches, and all that fun stuff. And, if you're the sort that likes coincidental symmetry and such as, Inti came out just before K.O.B.'s Identity Mash, which, if you remember, was the first 'I' album I covered from Suntrip. Ah, the neocortex abides.
Aside from that, there isn't anything especially significant about Inti beyond what it is – that being the yearly Suntrip compilation. I suppose there's some talking point about this coming out in 2017, a strangely lean year for the label (the aforementioned Identity Mash, a single from Astral Projection, and a concluding trilogy from Mindsphere all they put out). Guess it's a good thing they loaded this compilation up with all of their then-current hottest acts!
Actually, I don't know how accurate that statement is. I know for certain that the usual artists most folks considered Suntrip's core of its old guard (Filteria, E-Mantra, Ra, Khetzal) aren't present. Still, that Crossing Mind fella', he'd been a steady compilation contributor for much of the '10s, plus two albums out by this point. Okay, he counts, even if this was one of his final appearances with Suntrip (and ever).
Having spent more time with this label now, names like Morphic Resonance, Triquetra and Celestial Intelligence are definitely familiar to me, and even supply some of my favorite cuts off here. Morphic's Varese Dream affirms my enjoyment of his high energy brand of psy, Celestial's Distorted Visions gives me a glimpse of their sound being less soggy, Triquetra get two tracks, both still on that strictly reverential goa vibe, and Crossing Mind's Entropy... hey, chill breaks! Well, for a little bit at least.
The familiar out of the way, let's check out the un version of that, starting with Ovnimoon. Okay, he's far from unknown, but I've sparingly come across him over the years. He does a goa too. Jagoa's Perverse Polymorph goes way darker though, really touching on that period when psy started leaning way more sinister. And at the way opposite spectrum is Sykespico's Glimmers Of Sunrise, coming off like a long-lost cut off Paul van Dyk's Seven Ways. Hey, that's, like, my favoritist PvD album! Guess I approve of this track too, even if its at total odds with the rest of the compilation. Oh, it's the final track? Well, alright, its a suitable 'in search of sunrise' closer for a compilation titled after the sun.
A threefer! Yeah, as I've said, the only way I'm getting through this massive queue in any sort of timely fashion is to consolidate a few of these mini-series into bulk reviews. Honestly, this will probably only effect material from the N:L:E discography because, well, just look at what I've dealt with already! I'm significantly deep enough into Mr. Giacovino's catalogue now to know how these things go, so all that's left is detailing the particulars. I wager there are still enough proper 'albums' among his releases to warrant individual write-ups of those, but for these mini-series consisting of variations of similar ideas, probably not so much.
Which I feel does In-Organic Adventures a slight disservice in of itself. Far as I can tell based on the Liquid Frog Records chronology of releases, In-Organic Adventures was the first album Juan Pablo titled anything with 'organic', one of his favourite go-to words in general. True, 'Caravan' outpaces it by a wide margin, but it was his Organic Adventures on Neotantra that first clued me into his works, and a search of 'organic' on his Bandcamp page reveals ten more uses of it. That's gotta' have some importance to his larger body of work, the sort of stylistic kick-off that would influence much more after.
Or maybe not. The first of these came out in the earlier half of his musical output, when he was still beholden to what a standard album should entail. In-Organic Adventures comes off less restricted in that regard, a chance for Juan Pablo to indulge in some freeform ambient doodling without much need or care for what comes from the session. This approach to songcraft would be more thoroughly explored on his Caravan series, but we hear it best here first. Well, 'best' being something of a subjective stance, depending on your preference for gentle, pulsing ambience such as this. Three tracks, two of which are close to a half-hour combined, though it all plays like the same piece regardless. It's nice in a familiar way, but that's about it.
Juan Pablo must have felt there was more worth exploring with these sounds, as a year later he released In-Organic Adventures Continue (each track still self-titled, but now four through six). It's about the same length, and while still carrying that semi New Age meditative vibe as the first, there is a little more dubby production and naturalist instrumentation going on, making this session far more lively than the first. Then one year after, out comes In-Organic Adventures 3. The melodies and progression are similar, but are far different in terms of production. 7 is almost shockingly clean, lacking any of the dubby tonal depth most N:L:E tracks have, especially when stood in contrast with 8 and 9. These versions all are more rhythm focused too, but again only in contrast to the previous two editions. I suppose its the most interesting collection of tracks of the three, but Continue has the best balance between them all.
