(11.04.06) Charmingly enough, Mousike Lab defines IDM as “Italian Dance Music,”
holding up Ether’s Intimo Personelles as a prime example of the
cosmopolitan Continental knob-twiddling that is coming out of the
Apennine Peninsula. Following the recent trend of mixing hip-hop
vocals into the electronic mix, the eleven tracks of Intimo
Personelles are neither completely soulless nor fully soulful.
Somewhere in the middle, caught in a hiccup or a spasm, acting out
with syncopated posturing and blunt-time swaying.
The tracks are street corner soundtracks, really. Personal themes for
characters that you might find downtown, hanging out in doorways and
under street lamps; you might meet them in the park, a single
hand-slap passing dope; or, you’ll find them waiting in line at a
movie theater or a sub-basement jazz club. The character of “Treesta”
is a gansta schoolboy — sporting a collegiate uniform, black glasses
and precisely arranged dreadlocks. His lyric — a single verse
articulated again and again with crisp educated diction — snakes
around a languorous trip-hop loop like an overly sincere beat poet.
The syncopation of “Evry Kebab” hangs on dropouts and reversals like a
muttering street person who can’t decide which direction to travel.
His strident manifesto is delivered in fits and spurts, half-phrases
looped through the slap of his feet as he whirls back on his track.
“Numa Squeeze” is a self-absorbed breakbeat aficionado who cannot stop
himself from dancing to an imaginary beat, his elbows and knees
continually twisting in right-angle robot moves. “Tron v.7” is warm
and fuzzy, filled with percolating madness and darting digitized
violins. Slabs of low frequency static rumble through the room as if
“Tron v.7” has some intestinal distress.
“Shinobile Mas” is very old school, very much a friend of analog
synthesizers and first-generation patch kits. His keys have permanent
indentations from long-term abuse by his fingers and the old memory
chip in the system drops bits from his samples. A recording of his
girlfriend singing a lullaby becomes a fragmented ode to echoes, and
he tries to hide the limitation of his instrumentation by building
equally jagged rhythms. But the whole thing is too warm, too organic
to be as completely cold and processed as he would like. “Shinobile
Mas” wants to be icy and precise, but there’s a glitch in his system
that inserts bird song into his track, and he can never quite figure
out how to get it out.
“Low Price Juno” wants to sell you something, and he’s got quite a
song and dance routine to work the crowd. He’s full of expansive
synth swoops and a chorus of drummers rattling pots. Unfortunately
wet wires have damaged his PA system and his words are all garbled
syllables and chopped phrases. Standing in the back, you can’t really
make out what he’s saying, but the floating melodies and rhythmic pot
chamber orchestra make for an engaging enough display of tones and
drums that you don’t really mind.
There are a number of other characters to be found on Intimo
Personelles. Invite some of them over and let them tell you their
stories. There’s some interesting tales to be heard here.
Intimo Personelles is out now on Mousike Lab.
