The sound apparently sweeping the new ambient nation is so anodyne; and that, unlike the likes of Lull or Aquadorsa, or indeed Netherworld, it chimes so thinly within the GM programme of glacial and isolationist ambient; that the glacial I Remember deals in is so commodified, the isolation at such a remove, from a safe place, couched in a dull designer distillate of pixellated post-shoegaze, drip-dry drone and by-numbers dub-techno; that it’s diluted into a series of limp looping longueurs of secondhand twinkle and granular fluff.
That Brock Van Wey, aka Bvdub, is a prolific and accomplished producer is well established, evidenced in 2011 by no less than six full-length releases on labels of repute like Home Normal and Darla. That he’s among the most overrated of current operators in the ambient-drone-osphere would be a more contentious proposition. Conscious of journalistic convention that tends to naturalize the illusion of a certain objectivity in music criticism, this reviewer would prefer to declare an interest (or its opposite) from the outset, viz. the artist’s last Glacial Movements outing, The Art of Dying Alone, and previous echospace release, White Clouds Drift On and On, prompted much verbal wind and wuthering, and a worrisome new coinage: “Emo-bient”!
Bvdub was suddenly everywhere in 2011. Not everywhere like that Adele song, but in a low profile ambient community sort of way you couldn’t escape this electronic muzak-meister, this doleful tone-poet of the deep and meaningful, this chronicler of beautiful desolation, of maudlin moods for the mawkish at heart (check those titles: “This Place Had Known Only Sadness,” “There Was Nothing But Beauty in My Heart”). Where once was the acoustic bedroom balladeer – guitar, a tangle of hair and songs of love and hate, there was Bvdub, and his synthetic ambi-sentim-ent (another coinage: Sentient?). One would like to say, as with Marmite, that people either love or hate the stuff; but, no, it seems to have passed with hardly a nay-saying. Hence the above disclaimer: it could just be me…
I Remember proposes reworks of GM chief Netherworld’s Mørketid), with van Wey seeking to translate’the personal feelings and memories that album evoked in him into tracks that speak on the existence and pursuit of dreams lost and lived; so it says here, though elsewhere this translation emerges as largely an articulation of a dwelling upon some kind of post-rave epiphany/comedown attended by a few passing thoughts about the nature of scenes and our desire to be remembered through them. Be that as it may, as first strains of the opening track swim up, suffused with Ersatz affect, you just know what’s in store: a welter of wistful waves, a slow swelling, rousing into a kind of transcendent miserabilism. The latest update purveys the usual mope-fare: layers of loops drowning in their own echo returns and endless decay strung into saccharine motifs brought to fake climax through sheer force of recursion with scant variation; a swell and swirl out of which a vocal warble or the odd string pluck may peek out of before coyly retreating. The sub-New Age flavour of the sample fare – whether the siren warbles embellishing / disfiguring (you decide) “This Place Has Only Known Sadness” and “There Was Nothing But Beauty In My Heart” or the celestial choirs plastered across “We Said Forever” – occasions uncomfortable shifting long before the kickdrum comes to throw a lifeline out of the MOR-ass. “Would It Be The Same,” initially more subdued, with pensive piano plonk (D Minor) at least benefits from the kinesis provided by mid-track entry of soft-focus breakbeats, before all succumbs to the summoning of the signature white clouds to drift on and on, the air, befogged, clogged with a sampled and re-sampled thronging longing.
It’s not that Bvdub is a poor producer, but that the sound apparently sweeping the new ambient nation is so anodyne; and that, unlike the likes of Lull or Aquadorsa, or indeed Netherworld, it chimes so thinly within the GM programme of glacial and isolationist ambient; that the glacial I Remember deals in is so commodified, the isolation at such a remove, from a safe place, couched in a dull designer distillate of pixellated post-shoegaze, drip-dry drone and by-numbers dub-techno; that it’s diluted into a series of limp looping longueurs of secondhand twinkle and granular fluff – self-indulgent sprawls of slow drowning in faux-oceanism and suffocation in sonic syrup. Then again, it could just be me.
I Remember (Translations of Mørketid) is available on Glacial Movements. [Release page]
