(06.29.06) The latest release from duo Martyn Watson and Ric Peet dovetails
nicely with the resurgence of the em:t label as a waystation for the
electronically adventurous. Action Painting is a lysergic
curiosity, an aural psychedelic landscape that has a kinaesthetic
impact upon the listener. Watson and Peet throw classically-minded
electronics, contextually-adrift discourse, warped recordings of
fuzzed guitar and a hint of dub at a blank canvas where they let it
slide together, mixing and melding until a more-or-less stable state
is reached.
The looping melody of “AC Harmonics” may have come from a guitar once
upon a time, but it has been warped into a sound palette that is
reminiscent of a bent harmonium. While breezes of classical strings
and deploring electronics cascade around the looped melody,
crystalline percussion drops dewy trails in the wake of the swelling
melodies. “Stretch” is a nocturnal pastiche — a mimetic pastoral of
chimes, bell tones, vaporous electronics and brittle backmasking that
brings to mind a city in winter: glassy streets, lantern light
flickering beneath a film of ice, white smoke curling in abstract
symbols from soot-darkened chimneys, snow flecking the hibernating
trees.
The music of “Myopic” is nearly hidden beneath the foreground
recording of a physical therapy session. It is a drift of drones that
rises out of the encouraging dialogue and deposits us in the “Waiting
Room,” yet another interstitial piece. Filled with the reverb of
guitar strings, “Waiting Room” redecorates the musical headspace into
the experimental chill lounge of “That Time Already?” As if you have
been blindfolded, lead across town by the elbow, left in an elevator,
which in turn took you to a mysterious grotto where fat beats, string
quartets, a meandering breeze from the South Seas and a DJ with a
crate of old funk records greet you as if the party has been waiting
for you to arrive.
There’s a sense of falling down the rabbit hole with Action
Painting, a constant sonic disorientation that both envelops and
repulses you. Anne Papiri’s voice on “Fireworks” wants to seduce you,
but the music darts and swarms around you like so many wild birds —
fireworks, even — that distraction is constant. Until the birds all
roost and, accompanied by the noisy burr of cell phone static, fall
into an avian lullaby that swiftly calms your restlessness. The
swirling voices of “Polite State” intoning “Yes,” “No,” “Thank you,
please” contribute to the hypnologic state introduced by the bird song
of “Fireworks.” I can’t even remember what galaxy I’m in as the solar
flares of “Shimmer” begin to fall around me.
Classical guitar, modified bird song, and deft beat programming greet
our return to this earthly aural space in “Mornin’,” a paean to the
dawn light that dapples away the night. A chaotic wash of strings and
guitar represent the full flush of light that breaks the skyline and,
just like that, the frozen life of night is blown away by the
crescendoing texture of the day’s movement. And, yet, for as
gorgeously symphonic as “Mornin'” is, the subsequent “Granny Takes a
Trip” is an inversion of crackling vinyl, electronic squiggles,
distorted childhood nursery rhymes and deformed tones that, again,
drains us down the rabbit hole. We are flushed into a world of
echoing strings — a phantasmal realm where cast-off symphonies go to
lament their unfinished state.
Watson and Peet call Action Painting a “synaesthetic” record, a
collection of aural vignettes that twist the senses. The collision of
disparate instrumentation and styles certainly makes it feel like a
surreal mash-up experience, but they never completely abandon us. The
chaos of Action Painting feels guided, like International
Peoples Gang are your drug gurus. They are your LSD guides who show
you the door into the surreal psychedelic landscape but who always
give you a way back to comfortable reality.
Action Painting is out now on em:t.
