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“Our choices are not made freely,” spouts a comic book Karl Marx in an
old anti-communist pamphlet, “… they are forced on us by the times in
which we live,” he concludes summarizing his mentor Hegel. If such is
true, then the lines in which music drives down towards invention are
bordered by the shopping malls and apartments its culture can fill. So
any nostalgia filled jaunt to the sixties, seventies, or even the 18th
century is kind of like waddling down a lane full of traffic cones or
conversely hitting an open dirt patch of country byways now blocked by
commuters. Perhaps that’s why throwbacks can seem so vitally new when
they remove the constrictions of our times or so remarkably over used
when we notice their conservative-is-ms still haunting us. But if you
accept this as true, then Miami’s Dino Felipe might very well be more
than just your average nostalgia soaked time connoisseur. Starting off
on punk/ noise label Public Eyesore he’s released dirt clods of speaker
exhaust so grueling Wolf Eyes dared to split a 12″ with his other unit
Old Bombs. And conversely with Finesse and Runway he’s re-invented the
limo-cade brick weight cellular soundtracks of gentrification that
marked our fair year 1984. Then he’s revealing his life in a series of
3-minute hand recorded doodles and songs so quirkily transcribed they
seem more like commercials for Dino-ness than music. And that’s where
I’m starting this review, with the very beating heart of Dino-ism, and
his third full length for Schematic, I’m You.
I’m You’s predecessors are a competitive bunch; Film Toby was
masterful ambient, Xanaconversex (still my favorite Dino album) knocked
the kilter of ambient wash electronic melodies into garage fuzz more
inline with Pavement than Carl Craig, and I’m You is a bit of a return
to Toby’s more melodic laid back atmospheres. Ok I rip all these
promos to I-tunes and listen to them while I write these things so I’m
stopping at “Steamy Halls,” now listening to “Candi Staton.” Ahh OK so
“Steamy Halls” on I’m You is a good track where Dino creates his vocal
image into a hesitant stammer not unlike Woody Allen’s lack of
assurance and then builds in lo-fi electro, one swooning decrepit vocal
rip a little bluesy or Jennifer Herrema-ee, (click, play 2 of “Staton’s
In The Ghetto”) drives home a ragged homage that I’m rather fond of.
It’s such soundtracks to e-mail, tweaking Photoshop files, destroying
last nights Soulseek duds, the mundane actions of the everyday that
still contain that little essence of 90s technological enthusiasm that
I’m You seems to so effectively hone in on. But even Dino’s tones,
hyper-kinetic amphetamine drenched fast-forward lurches, bear little
resemblance to any previous autobahn venture into the digital realm.
Felipe lives in a period of his own, dropping ground-zero collages as
crescendos to solid electronica songs that twitter and spazz in a way
that’s not annoying but rather charming. “In The Orange Field” is just
another good electronic ditty (it even rips Aphex at times) and it’s
pulled off so effortlessly that it makes you aware just how above the
mold of IDM perfection Dino is. In person he claims these ambient
tracks aren’t his bag and it shows, I’m You is more akin to Animal
Collective or Black Dice, only without The Collective’s indigenous and
folk references. I’m You is a step back for Dino but still a step
forward for music as whole, its ambivalence to history’s trade routes
and contemporary road ways means it might be electronica’s only current
form of escape.
Finesse and Runway though is a consciously historical piece of music.
Delving into the eighties as its reference, Dino’s production duties
mesh the Felipe sound with new wave. “Melba” provides vocals and
inspiration and the album flows by as one excellent dirt-infused
neo-electro trash-pop fucker. Finesse and Runway is sonic overload at
times sounding like Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives (second Twin Infin
reference of the year) and others bubbling into silly songs about boys
in locker rooms, and of course a sexual effrontery that would make
Kathy Acker proud. But it also presents a diversity of music so
mind-boggling well done, yet lo-fi, it blares the signs of someone who
traverses a music with out becoming a fan. Anyway, I just read some
smart guy review at Pitchfork a lot like this one, so I’m just gonna
go and end out with a yippe hey hooray for My. Felipe, the video game
squire that makes all the straight boys wet as Mr. Von Schirach once
put it.
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