Shackleton :: Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs (Woe To The Septic Heart!)

Despite Shackleton’s fondness for doomsday scenarios, this is one very uplifting collection. The length and width and breadth and grasp of Shackleton is absolutely equatorial.

The artistic trajectory of Shackleton has been impressive to behold. After honing an utterly unique niche in dubstep, inspiring Ricardo Villalobos—probably the most innovative of the past decade’s techno artists—to craft a groundbreaking, genre-creating mastodon remix, he proceeded to compose his own dancefloor mix into one seamless opus on Fabric 55 and filled new spaces with boundless rhythmic ingenuity on Three EPs. Having burned down the disco, he moved into the theatre, scoring Refugee of the Septic Heart for the Tom Dale contemporary dance company, hailed as a dark, abstract and hypnotic run at the boundaries of both dance and electronic music.

From his now well and truly interred Skull Disco label, he inaugurates a new label with his visual interpreter Zeke Clough in tow, who decorates the lidded black and white box housing this double disc set with writhing illustrations calling to mind Keith Haring on acid infected with the hellish vision of a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch. New acquaintances Andreas Gerth of Tied + Tickled Trio and Kingsuk Biswas of Bedouin Ascent grace the first and last tracks of Music for the Quiet Hour. Spoken word by Vengeance Tenfold, who previously appeared with Shackleton on ”Death is Not Final,” is a less essential companion; to these ears, his oracular pronouncements of apocalypse impending are too comic book. The broad selection of sampled voices help the end-times story along better than the poet’s, though even his, when looped by the man behind the curtain, are not as intrusive.

Music for the Quiet Hour is thus his second long-form piece after working with Tom Dale. Shackleton introduces it as “generally bass heavy and percussive with an involved narrative.” Although chiefly comparable insofar as the centrality of rhythm and recurring motif is concerned, it reminds one of the emergence of Philip Glass and Steve Reich from the gallery scene rather than the concert hall. Shackleton emerges from the dance floor booth, where he stood out as the most singular stylist when the genre was new and the scene tiny. Middle Eastern percussion became something of a hallmark, and as the years passed, it migrated further south to sound increasingly African in tone and timbre. With Music for the Quiet Hour, the DNA weave has become so tangled that Arabic, African, Indian, Indonesian or the marimba rhythms Reich developed in New York all come together as one complex polybeat.

The accompanying disc is a narrative of its own, the result of Shackleton becoming enamored of an outmoded Italian drawbar organ module. As mentioned, Shackleton’s rhythms have always suggested exotic places, though smoothly assimilated into his own world. The Drawbar Organ EPs opens with the decidedly Indonesian vivacity of “(For the) Love of Weeping,” its tuned, gamelan clang judiciously suited to the deep, rich organ, as its tinkle is later on with the bass of “It is Not Easy.” This is sculptural rhythmics, crafted out of soft bronze, solid and substantial but with some give that gives off warmth. Its track-for-track strength makes this a record that will wear its patina handsomely as time passes. As if to counteract a media world which broadcasts rage and violence, Shackleton’s many, sampled voices encourage and speak sense. There is also plenty of bleed-through from the first disc, most obviously on the organ and choir of the Glassian “Sweet Present Tense.” There is so much life breathing through “Test Tubes” it could swim from one tropical island to another without once coming up for air. “Katyusha” is a tour-de-force, absolutely balletic in its eleven-minute dervish toe spin. Despite Shackleton’s fondness for doomsday scenarios, this is one very uplifting collection.

The length and width and breadth and grasp of Shackleton is absolutely equatorial.

Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs is available on Woe To The Septic Heart!.