Marking twenty years since the release of Everdom, their experience in tech, minimal, and glitch shines through, staying true to form but undoubtedly pushing the boundaries with frequent outbursts of clever electronica.
Pushing the boundaries with frequent outbursts of clever electronica
As perfect as I am, I clearly have my faults. Today I discovered that one of them was not knowing about the existence of Anders Ilar, whom I have realized is one of the best things to come out of Sweden since self-assembly furniture. However, unlike auto-fabricated fixtures for your home, you won’t need to put together a jumble of components to create something of questionable quality as his latest release Light & Shadow out on Touched Music comes pre-assembled to the highest standards and the craftsmanship is top-notch.
Twenty tracks, split evenly between original works and remixes (for Machinedrum, Yard, Porn Sword Tobacco, Dorosoto, Phasen, Ripperton, Mikkel Metal, Apparat, and Pan Electric) is enough of an insight for me to realize that I should have been paying a bit more attention at times because this is right up my alley. Marking twenty years since the release of Everdom, their experience in tech, minimal, and glitch shines through, staying true to form but undoubtedly pushing the boundaries with frequent outbursts of clever electronica.
Opening with “Moments Are Too Short,” Anders quickly shows that with a bit of thought and patience that playing around with a simple concept is often very fruitful. Tones of prepared piano and an erratic background midline rapidly have me engaged. “Brokenhearted” does nothing to stop my infatuation with pretty much nine minutes of beat and continuous phrasing that makes my working day a hell of a lot easier. This theme is present the whole way through the release, genuinely surprising me when tracks decide to wind on down to their conclusions.
Some tracks offer darker tones ::
“Fallen Majesty” and “Poison Sunset” both induce some angst and standing out from the original works. They’re interestingly placed, bracketing the much lighter, softer and almost-meditative “Mosaic.” The division between them is harsh yet manages not to be jarring.
Two pieces, “Things Never Said” and “Wooden Handprints” genuinely wind things down for the end of the first half, much less energetic and very much dreamlike. And I’m not complaining, after some right crackers and before a set of ten remixes, it’s good to have a few minutes of respite.
I’m genuinely spoiled by the inclusion of ten tracks of reworks here—both by names I know and those that I don’t, which offers a good opportunity to go off on an internet hunt. Of particular note the sylvan sounds of Apparat gets a minimal treatment, Machinedrum sounding a lot less hectic than I’m used to (almost BoC-like in places) and a reminder to me to go and listen to more Porn Sword Tobacco.
Light & Shadow will be out as a limited double CD (and sold out at the time of this review) but if you miss out it will also be available digitally via Bandcamp, so as there’s plenty of ones and zeroes to go around these days, I suggest you all pick up a copy today.
Light & Shadow is available on Touched Music. [Bandcamp]
