(12.03.06) Thinking Cool 90s Alt Rock Man’s producer pin-up, Steve Albini (no, don’t go away, stay with it) is quoted as saying: “As the idiom developed, the music became more and more about the novelty of certain sounds and treatments, ridiculously trivial aspects like tempo and choice of samples, and the public personae of the makers. It became a race to novelty. I find that kind of evolution beneath triviality. It is a decorative, not substantive, evolution.” This thought-bite comes from the Wikipedia entry for ‘IDM,’ believe it or not. Now, one might question Albini’s authority as a commentator on anything other than alt rawk, but his words do contain a grain of truth (apart from the stuff about the cultivation of ‘public personae,’ which seems off the mark, IDM being less culpable than most popular music genres in this respect).
False modesty ditched, let it be stated from the outset that a certain music scribe not too far from the seat here occupied said of Proem’s last studio album that it “comes across a bit like perfect generically-engineered output from a hypothesized ‘IDM’ buzz sound generator.” Yikes. Not content with this apparent out-of-hand dismissal, further qualification identified “a throwing together of all those textural and architectural features characteristic of the sub-genre: slightly melancholic reminiscent melodies, wibbles and bloops, glitchy microsounds and skittery percussion.” Bringing the curtain down on this orgy of self-referentiality lest it start to smack of pretension rather than merely making use of all available quality documentary resources, it should immediately be pointed out that these remarks were made in the context of an ultimately ‘good’ review. The point being that it is possible for the artist to Do Good Works while operating with an extremely heightened sense of genre-consciousness (sidenote: one need only think of certain self-consciously articulated novels – be they ‘murder mystery,’ ‘noir detective’, or ‘sci-fi dystopian’ – to understand how this kind of adherence to genre conventions still permits excellent work, provided craft and a certain individuality of voice is displayed within an otherwise unoriginal context. So, returning to the IDM point, 2003’s Socially Inept had seen Proem refining his blend to what seemed like an almost too genre-defining degree – to the point that when asked to explain what exactly this ‘IDM’ term referred to by a (musically) troublesome friend, one might simply hand over a copy and urge explanatory listening. So, now out with it:
Richard Bailey has gone further, and, with this latest release, transcended his erstwhile mimetic mien and plagiaristic prowess to mark out a distinct territory as Proemland – ruled by an evidently fanatical designer/programmer, sophisticated melodician and meticulous rhythm-smith. Important news indeed for slumbering bit-crushing, beat-streaming IDM-heads, who haven’t had an easy waking time of it in 2006, with electronica dozing off into ‘folk’ and ‘forest’ and ‘film’ (yes, you at the back, Type, hold up your bandwagon-jumping hands). Let’s be honest, then, and acknowledge that, in You shall have ever been Proem has articulated one of the most consummate statements ever in the post-Warp Merck/Toytronic/n5MD vernacular of IDM-language, judged purely on the basis of musical and sound production values. Counting against it – one might hold back the last half of the fifth of five notional stars – is its almost anal will-to-perfection, i.e. it may ‘lose’ something in its just-so-ness, in its too-clean realization, in its lack of ‘soul’ if you want to be Romanticist, and ‘grain,’ if you ‘wanna get all semiotic and post-Barthesian about it. But it should be said, nods all round where it’s merited, this listener, having ploughed this particular furrow of electronica more than most from early Autechre to Bola to all the Usual Suspects of 2nd and 3rd generation influence, of whom Proem is one, goes on record as characterizing this release as a ‘chef d’oeuvre,’ a ”tour de force,’ all rolled into one.
A piece like “Field of Flies,” for example, is an object lesson in IDMology. You get virtual symphonics underpinned by beat-crunch and fizz-skitter, and may swoon awash in reverbed digital heaven, attended by sunburst-finish synth eruptions. Further florid sentences straining to describe other such audio-installments from ‘YSHEB’ may be spared. Suffice it to say all is atmospherically rich, texturally teeming, and tight. Added to which, poetics aside now, if you decide to shell out you get a whole lot more for your investment, this being a double CD that bundles together with the studio assemblage a live set recorded at the 2005 Decibel Festival. It’s just a shame it all had to come so late in the day, when the paradigm has shifted and it will likely amount to a sort of Exquisite Corpse to many (sign of the times: the demise of labels like Neo Ouija, the impending Merck closure, etc etc).
Warning: may contain traces of vocoder.
You Shall Have Ever Been is out now on Merck.
