(01.13.05) Ochre (Chris Leary) is attracting a lot of critical attention at the moment, because of his previous releases, his focused efforts to promote his work and most recently because of the imminent (and sadly delayed due to pressing problems) release of his debut album for Toytronic. A Midsummer Nice Dream lives up to its name: it’s nice. One of the album’s real strengths is the layered and memorable melodies of many of the tracks, perhaps unsurprising given Ochre’s previous web-released homages to old console and computer game themes where melody was pretty much all you had.
The best tracks on the album appear early. “Yugen” is textbook Toytronic material: glitchy, infectiously catchy, bright and inoffensive. “Low Grav Freefall (High Altitude Mix)” is exceptionally pretty, bedecked with bouncing-ball effects and lush, dew-soaked strings. “Revolver” is ingeniously composed –its moods shifting and elusive, its melodies dramatic, and slightly dark. The laid-back, effervescent “REM Sleep Research” twinkles and bubbles amidst misty string chords. But five tracks in, something odd happens. It becomes increasingly apparent as the album unfolds that the sound-palette employed is somewhat limiting.
Much of the music sounds almost claustrophobic, penned-in, as if it’s holding its breath, and desperate to escape the confines of its all too limited electronic environment. It’s as much about the resources available to Leary as anything else, and is a testament to his talent and ambition as a composer that these works evoke this feeling. Someone needs to throw lots of money Leary’s way and allow him to push beyond the confines of electronically generated music and out into the field of expensively produced, orchestrated works. A wonderful example of the potential results can be heard on the downloadable “Mithrax Ochre Remix” where saxophone has been masterfully blended with electronica and Leary’s tongue-in-cheek 8-bit wizardry, or Ochre’s superlative remix of Digitonal’s string-infused “Breakbeat Phase,” one of those rare cases where a remix is actually several orders of magnitude better than the already wonderful original.
It’s interesting to try and imagine just how expansive tracks like “REM Sleep Research,” “Revolver,” “Summer Lusk” or “Low Grav Freefall (High Altitude Mix)” could sound with real strings, real instruments, expensive production –certainly the compositions on A Midsummer Nice Dream are packed with the potential to capitalize on and, as such, deserve all these things.
Rather disappointingly, there are a few too many filler tracks here, mainly consisting of pleasant enough but over-simplified strings or synths playing out a pleasant enough but consequently un-engaging melody, and these are all too temptingly skippable. “Brancaster Coast,” “Eleven,” “Saturniner” and the title track are all guilty of this to a certain degree. A quick visit to Ochre’s website will reveal a host of free, downloadable tracks (in high quality Ogg Vorbis format no less) which run the gamut between the aforementioned console/computer game tributes (“Playsoft,” “Ourcade,” “Mobile Phoning”) to multi-layered melodic masterpieces like “Advanced Tree Surgery” or “Mithrax Ochre Remix.” It’s therefore a real shame that there are very few masterpieces on this debut long-player. It’s all a little too polite, pulls too many punches, and lacks the sense of humor present within many of those downloadable tracks. Even “Drink Malk,” stuffed full of 8-bit mayhem, lacks the fun of some of Ochre’s online releases. A Midsummer Nice Dream is another pleasant album from Toytronic, when what’s really needed is a killer one. Nevertheless the potential here is quite staggering and the deft compositional style reveals the enormous talent behind what is an impressive if not stunning debut long-player.
A Midsummer Nice Dream is out now on Toytronic Records.
