(12.31.07) Aaron Spectre’s press blurb trails him as producing a whole range of music
from dubstep to jungle to ambient. In fact, his recent Drumcorps album
Grist – an extended outburst of grindcore mentalist brutalism – won an
honour of distinction at Austria’s Ars Electronica. But in this album, the
first bearing the Aaron Spectre name, a more doe-eyed and alluring albeit
not totally tamed animal is presented. Written in New York and Berlin, and
recorded between 2001-2007, Lost Tracks presents a more melodic, downtempo,
occasionally even delicate side of one of today’s new breed of hybridizing
electronic sound practitioners.
As the opening strains of translucent dulcimer plucks hang airborne on
er… “Dulcimer,” lightly trailing their delay vapours, it occurs that this
is a statement of more considered intent from Spectre – to establish a
totally distinct identity from the studiedly uncouth barrage of Drumcorps.
Even the oldest track, “The Wrong Fuel,” a sulky drone-glitch outing
betraying hours evidently spent by Spectre majoring in the college of
Gridlock/Displacer, Funckarma/Quench, and early n5md school, folds its
layers of feedback-edged resonance tidily in to its spectral (pun intended)
synths with a polished crunch to its beats. “4 Voices,” a very
Lusine-geared piece of downtempo float-funk, further flaunts its
eclectically-inclined maker’s refined sound design predilections, as does
an all sweetness’n’light remix of Aarktica’s strummy and stringy
indie-soft-rock opus, “Ocean.” Even a post-Ninja Tune exercise in darkish
Hip-Hop, “Down in the Gutter,” is content to hang back in the somewhat
formulaic shadows, rather than pushing the genre envelope in the manner of
more sonically radical post-Hoppers such as labelmates Larvae or the Mush-y
Caural. More along the exploratory lines envisaged, in fact, would be the
crepuscular cavernousness of his remix of Lapsed’s “Break Ya Neck”.
“Degrees” closes the album back in designer mode, channelling something
close to Björk meets Massive Attack, doing a more minor key take on
“Teardrop” – an impression enhanced by the vocalizings of Kazumi, set to
upfront acoustic guitar pluckings and those ever-precise Spectre beats.
Lost Tracks, then, is a proficiently wrought album of slightly doleful
downtempo and faintly shadowy atmospheres wherein Spectre seems to attempt
to find himself through exploring his softer side in a kind of indulgence
of the Yang to his breakcore thrash Yin. In so doing, he risks a certain
degree of personality effacement in the unwonted forebearance and politesse
evidenced. It’s undeniably a meticulously crafted and pleasing collection
for the seeker after lightly darkside rhythmic pop-tronica. Ultimately,
however, it may be that such seekers are thin on the ground these days, as
the quest for ever renewed sub-genres and hybrids means that what was once
a substantial Zeitgeist-conscious audience for ambient-IDM fuelled vehicles
(in a 10-year stretch bounded by 1995-2004) is lured away with the latest
shiny models and Shock Of The New tactics. [Purchase
Lost Tracks is out now on Ad Noiseam.
