this is the voice of re:mote induction.Sunday, September 21, 2003
Daniel Givens – Freedom’s Myth – a 4 track 12”, with about 35 minutes of music from the american aesthetics label.
Concrete Migration is a repetitive piece, starting with the initial wood block beats. The beats become more detailed with the addition of strumming guitar work and a chiming/sheer level – hi hat splashes against a bass line. Vocal element comes in as a repeated dun-dun sound, patterned to give a kind of melody, a deliberate structure. The feel is down beat, quite understated so that it just kind of happens –with that pleasant enough, though tending towards unremarkable.
Middle Passage feels like a conjuring, the words of the start sounding like a spell. With the piece evolving into some kind of primal ritual. “Breathe” is intoned into this more atmospheric buzz – “breathe your wisdom into me”. Bass notes build in a rhythmic, clunking stroke, deeply reverberant. The voice goes into a groaning territory, suiting the building strum of layered strings. Percussion adds as blocks, and shimmering waves. Quite different from the rest of the release, and for me a lot more appealing.
Bird/Flight appropriately has some electric bird noises chirping away. Funny little sounds flittering through the thick bass and solid kick drum. Cymbals patter while the bas becomes strumming and the bird noises become a flute, or similar, a chirpy little feel, quite mellow. The sound of this piece is more in keeping with the first piece, laid back with a certain lounge jazz influence suggested, I guess.
Bridges starts with hesitance, conscious of it’s spatial impact. Slowly filling silence with thrumming bass, little note flickers and flute breaths. Guitars warble, while percussion plays on the tinkle and clunk detail. Even when the spaces are filled and the silence is sound there is a sense of a sparser approach. Even though that provides a certain structure, a deliberation, there is an under current of abstraction to the piece and the way it wanders within the scope of it’s sound pallet.
This release captures something of a certain scene in Chicago, recorded in Chicago with Doug Scharin (Him, Mice Parade, Rex, June of 44), with the various tracks featuring input from guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 217), vocalist Glenda Baker (presumably so prominent on Middle Passage), celloist Fred Lonberg-Holm and upright bassist Josh Abrams (Town & Country; being particularly evident on the track Bridges). As a sound scene it isn’t one that I particularly played a lot of attention to, it was never entirely thing, in the same way that this release is not entirely my thing – though I can appreciate it to some extent, even so I know others who may appreciate this release more. Personally the track Middle Passage was a lot more appealing to me than any of the other pieces on the release, but it stands as being from a different mind set than the rest of the material. Of the those other 3 tracks it is most likely Bridges which I would select as being a stand out, admiring the use of space within the piece.
Concrete Migration is a repetitive piece, starting with the initial wood block beats. The beats become more detailed with the addition of strumming guitar work and a chiming/sheer level – hi hat splashes against a bass line. Vocal element comes in as a repeated dun-dun sound, patterned to give a kind of melody, a deliberate structure. The feel is down beat, quite understated so that it just kind of happens –with that pleasant enough, though tending towards unremarkable.
Middle Passage feels like a conjuring, the words of the start sounding like a spell. With the piece evolving into some kind of primal ritual. “Breathe” is intoned into this more atmospheric buzz – “breathe your wisdom into me”. Bass notes build in a rhythmic, clunking stroke, deeply reverberant. The voice goes into a groaning territory, suiting the building strum of layered strings. Percussion adds as blocks, and shimmering waves. Quite different from the rest of the release, and for me a lot more appealing.
Bird/Flight appropriately has some electric bird noises chirping away. Funny little sounds flittering through the thick bass and solid kick drum. Cymbals patter while the bas becomes strumming and the bird noises become a flute, or similar, a chirpy little feel, quite mellow. The sound of this piece is more in keeping with the first piece, laid back with a certain lounge jazz influence suggested, I guess.
Bridges starts with hesitance, conscious of it’s spatial impact. Slowly filling silence with thrumming bass, little note flickers and flute breaths. Guitars warble, while percussion plays on the tinkle and clunk detail. Even when the spaces are filled and the silence is sound there is a sense of a sparser approach. Even though that provides a certain structure, a deliberation, there is an under current of abstraction to the piece and the way it wanders within the scope of it’s sound pallet.
This release captures something of a certain scene in Chicago, recorded in Chicago with Doug Scharin (Him, Mice Parade, Rex, June of 44), with the various tracks featuring input from guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 217), vocalist Glenda Baker (presumably so prominent on Middle Passage), celloist Fred Lonberg-Holm and upright bassist Josh Abrams (Town & Country; being particularly evident on the track Bridges). As a sound scene it isn’t one that I particularly played a lot of attention to, it was never entirely thing, in the same way that this release is not entirely my thing – though I can appreciate it to some extent, even so I know others who may appreciate this release more. Personally the track Middle Passage was a lot more appealing to me than any of the other pieces on the release, but it stands as being from a different mind set than the rest of the material. Of the those other 3 tracks it is most likely Bridges which I would select as being a stand out, admiring the use of space within the piece.
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