(09.13.06) The cover of Photophob’s latest record is a grey/sepia print of dried
leaves, dead and wrinkled but nonetheless still attached to a tree
limb. The title — Still Warm — similarly hints at the cusp
of crepuscularity — the corpse not yet cold, the soul not yet fled.
Photophob is still electron-wrangling and beat-boxing, but there are
vibrations within these fifteen breakbeat tracks that reach up through
the programming and time code slicing like organic seedlings.
A metal implement scrapes itself across a synthesizer’s presets in
“Last Judgement Show Ticket,” generating tones and tearing noises with
equal aplomb. “Fairy Falls” whispers with the motion of gossamer
wings and sidhe strings, while “Huge Storm Coming (Fairy Falls)”
variants the melody of the previous track as if performed by a quartet
of precisely tuned radio beacons while a lumbering percussionist keeps
warped time on old steel drums. Layers of drum programming roll like
ocean waves in “Still Warm (Why Not)” while synth pads shudder and
ooze like oil slicking the surface of a restless sea. Where does the
oil come from? An ambient interlude sucks us under the waves, down
deep to the ocean floor, where a disembodied voice tersely questions
reality. We are thrown back to the surface again by the seismic
release of a gas bubble.
Spectral voices flow throughout the record like apparitions who are
summoned by an electronic Oija board at a séance held for nostalgic
radio announcers. An old maritime operator floats through “What Went
Wrong,” drifting over the plaintive pads and the baritone crackle of
dark hop drums. In “Bad Habits No. 1 to No. 7,” a faded socialite
intones a list of habitual oversights as bittersweet keyboards flit on
the rim of a tight snare drum while fuzzed static and the breath off
industrial wastelands perform shadow puppet theater across the back of
the stage. In “The Games The Mind Can Play,” a disembodied scientist
muses on the complexity of nature while a uncomplicated synth melody
articulates across a wide sea of slow tones.
Photophob’s previous record was Your Majesty Machine, an
energized ode to robotics and, while Herwig Holzmann still retains
some of that old code, Still Warm is a new version. A cyborg
update at the very least, where the machinery is interwoven with
organs and fluids from an organic source. Still Warm is a
human face attached to a binary core — machine music that has
discovered the joy and sorrow of human emotions. This is the sound of
the machines attempting to understand the variances of the human
spirit.
Still Warm is out now on Hive. Buy it at Amazon.com.
