Ambulance :: Combover (Open Ear)

Combover draws on modern day influences from electro and house whilst calling upon those cracked circuits and keyboard noodling that brought Murphy and O’Reilly to prominence all those years ago.

Growing up in the Irish midlands meant encountering good silage was far easier than finding electronic music. In the year 2000 I had a job in my friend’s florist in the local town. Sweeping floors, helping customers, that sort of malark. Lunch times were spent munching chips, walking the town and gawping in shop windows. It was during one such gawp that I bumped into some techno, a first gig for my fifteen year old self was on the horizon.

For reasons that are still unclear, 808 State were playing in the next town over, Mullingar, as the headliners of a small two day shindig. After sourcing a ticket I sourced a lift to the night whose line up included a blend of raw talent and nervous first timers. Falling into the former category were a duo who opened the event, Ambulance. Whereas other acts performed house or techno, this pair wove a more intricate sound that delved into complex beat patterns and dreamy melodies. It was plain to hear that this partnership of Dunk Murphy and Trev O’Reilly had something to them, and others agreed with the Irishmen being picked up by Planet Mu in 2002 for a seven inch and an album in 2003. After this flurry of activity, this meteoric rise from Mullingar fields to Mike Paradinas’, the machines went silent and it appears the wheels came off Ambulance.

Fast forward fifteen years and Murphy and O’Reilly are back. Inspired by their closing set at Dublin’s Open Ear festival in 2017, Combover is a four tracker that picks up where the pair left off a decade and a half ago and inaugurates a new Irish imprint. “Caítriona Chéile” inaugurates this return. Creaking squelching rhythm patterns are soon met by seductively sweet notes that spiral skyward. The track has all the playfulness of the Dubliners’ sounds on Planet Mu while having more of a lean towards the floor with its choppy samples cuts. A skeletal beat soon muscles up into a thumping kick to introduce “Douche Noir.” Like an uncle at a wedding, these drums begin to lumber and stumble as they imbibe more and more of the track. Glitch rinses soon arrive alongside a daring synthline to transform this techno jackhammer into a dark eyed, rave stained, beast. Murphy and O’Reilly have undoubtedly been influenced by the rise of more stable percussion in the past decade, the pair moving away themselves for fractured and fragmented drums. Instead, Ambulance experiment from a steady beat bedrock. “Luxury Crackers” is emblematic of this. Around a central clap whispers echo, computer bird song trills and chords cascade to produce a wonderfully absorbing piece. Where this stability begins to break down is in the sliding slices of “Greasy.” A spread of sounds, of varying shapes and sizes, are scissored, split and spliced back together. Despite this free-for-all frenzied approach, a semblance of control returns half way through the track as those slippery sounds are reigned in to give the piece a final fluid form.

It’s a curious thing how much electronic music has changed since 2003. The once fat shelf of electronica you used to find in the record shop has slimmed down to a waif of its former self. There was the argument that the style had began to take itself too seriously, the it became all beard stroking, glasses readjusting and little else. This generalization doesn’t do the artists justice nor the sounds of the early 2000s. Amidst the complexity and the deeper dive into computer composing, the human touch remained with all its artistic flourish and playfulness. Ambulance definitely maintained this subtly to their music and they continue to do so. Combover draws on modern day influences from electro and house whilst calling upon those cracked circuits and keyboard noodling that brought Murphy and O’Reilly to prominence all those years ago, when I was a boy.

Combover is available on Open Ear.