Park Avenue Music & Cuushe :: Double review

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Park Avenue Music :: For Your Home or Office (Mü-Nest)
A very welcome re-release. Because of its nifty, “That Girl” modernist advertising art (its layout slightly tweaked to make it just right and stretched into skinny pocket book format) and because it is a real little pearl, one that listeners cherished when it was first released in 2004 (in an edition of only 750 copies) and that hasn’t lost any of its charm in the interim. The six original tracks plus six remixes make this a kind of celebration. Because it is a stylish little masterpiece that doesn’t sound quite like anything else. Audrey Hepburn with a nice midtown apartment and a laptop.

Wes Steed and Jeannette Faith, a married couple from Sacramento, play piano and sing and make rhythms on home-made machines and run it all through digital software to produce snap, crackle and pop ambience, with Faith’s dramatic voice searching to touch like electrical tentacles. Each tune is a truly distinct creation within a strong, cohesive framework, a wild, dual imagination juddering, carbonating and cheese-grating every expectation. A kitten playing with a ball of pop music and pulling all the threads loose.

A two-minute, previously unreleased instrumental “Interlude” separates the original from the remixers, all of whom do some serious toying around, an indication of how much they care for the material. Aus cuts up “Cutter” with dramatic snare drum reports, while Geskia! blows bubbles out of “The Mellow One,” making it somehow bouncier and more melancholic at the same time. Ametsub, a remarkable talent who deserves much more attention, gives “Golden Hummingbird” a magically-wired r’n’b wiggle. Lorin Sylvester Strohm softly houses up “How’s Your 401K” and cleverly introduces woodwinds and takes over the vocals, or at least a sliver of them. Popland & Yoshinori Takezawa stroke “The Modern Guide” gently, and include a chamber interlude, harp and all. Finally, a robust session by Hior Chronik, with pauses to catch your breathe. Nobody doesn’t do a simply terrific job.

Sixty-seven high-caliber minutes in as nice a package as this makes For Your Home or Office an absolute bargain.

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Cuushe :: Girl You Know That I am Here but the Dream (Flau)
Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi didn’t have to wait as long as Park Avenue Music for similar treatment. Known as Cuushe, her sophomore release consists of only three new songs, one each on its own three-inch disc accompanied by remixes (not necessarily of the same song) by a stunning international line-up of contemporaries, further complemented with treatments by the above-mentioned Aus, mastering by Miles Whittaker (Demdike Stare) and a cover art collage by Rachel Evans (aka Motion Sickness of Time Travel).

Cuushe’s vocals waver, quiver and cling so closely to the music. She breathes fairly indecipherable sentences at a looking glass, they fog formlessly outward before fading away. On the first disc, Cuushe asks “Do You Know the Way to Sleep?” to a surprisingly belting drum and piano accompaniment. Geskia! first gives her a good fluff, bringing more space and fresh air to the piece, before turning it into a pittering rainshower. Botany’s remix is a wooden wind chime disturbed by Cuushe’s breathe until it whirls like a windmill, and Julia Holter makes fragmented sound art which mirrors the cover design, though what worked visually is not as aurally successful.

“I Dream About Silence” is a beachfront, dream pop song very reminiscent of the best tracks off Teen Daze’s recent A Silent Planet, so his appearance on this particular disc is natural and seamless. But first Kixnare—Łukasz Maszczyński from Poland—delves deeper back into analogue synth pop history and timbre, his “From the Window on the Plane” subtracting her voice entirely while adding some much welcome heft to the collection. Oddly, Blackbird Blackbird’s entry sounds like a remix of Kixnare’s track, with hints of whispers from Cuushe and a turbo charge kicking in at selected intervals. Teen Daze tempuras her voice and tosses it among the crests coming in off briny, starfish-filled waves.

“9125 Days of Sleep Wave” is lyrically unintelligible but ‘oh so pretty. Motion Sicknes Of Time Travel utterly abstracts her piece with shuddering distant guitars and a vapour trail against a blue, blue sky, while Argentinian Federico Durand unfortunately disturbs what could have been a transportive ambient piece with unnecessary sound effects.

The flimsy but glossy paper makes the beautiful, eight-paneled pamphlet packaging something you will have to handle with care, especially when plucking the miniature discs off their perches. And you’ll probably keep it in its plastic pocket to keep the edges from rolling, but it will look as handsome on your shelf as it sounds on your stereo.