(06.03.07) Though dub is the ostensible word, it turns out that the content of War is
driven as much by Deleuze and Guattari as Tubby and Perry. Teleseen is
Gabriel Cyr, Brooklyn producer and multi-instrumentalist, building abstract
dubscapes speckled with stratified ambience. His greyscale stick-figure dub
minimalism has a touch of a freeze-dried academic air about it despite the
viscerality of some of its low-end theory, less deconstructed and
fragment-strewn than Pole – more er… groovy in fact – but less
booty-bothered and tech-savvy than Deadbeat. A rudimentary clue-up from a
shrewd google locates Teleseen as part of a project positing post-rave
electronic music as “a site of revolution and experimentation.” Right on.
It’s further evidenced by overtly political titles such as “Work Will Not
Set You Free,” signalling that there is signification to be teased out of
the abstract formalism of some of the content for those that would seek.
War launches out on “Malachi” with familiar ammunition from the reggae-dub
stockpile: functional two-chord piano vamping on off-beat, dub bassline,
pit-pat rimshot + kick, then slowly striated with wispy slivers of
feedback-edged melodica and odd wood and metal percussives to create a
virtual skank-world that chugs along for 12 minutes. The trick – in
rendering this a diverting experience rather than the longueur that
distracted listening might first indicate – is to realize that Teleesen
likes to play around with micro-variation in perspective and emplacement
within what might appear to be relatively uneventful sonic space. So for
the unwary, you might be missing out if you treat this as background skank
filler rather than headphone staple. Thus, for most of the tracks, does War
proceed, extrapolating from roots reggae, touching base/bass, then dragging
its digital dub tendrils across the spectral outlines of those Mille
Plateaux, relieved by odd folds and rhizomes of etiolated colourings,
spatial tinkerings, and percussive delay-play. The recipe works best as
realized on “Xion Gate” with its sleek sub-bass chug locked in with
kick-pulse while the echo-returns are pushed to red zone-dancing and static
shimmer plays over the whole like a heat haze. On the nervously twitching
“Burdens,” 4/4 kicks lead the track into lo-bpm minimal techno terrain
before a reverb-drenched smear of street symphony composed of muezzin wail
and haunted hubbub infests the backdrop fantas(m/t)ically, hinting at
Orientalist unsettlements way-off-distant – though not enough to be
ignored. The ambient substrata, electronic and organic, that crepitate
throughout tracks such as the troubled “The Liberty Halls” seem to allude
to a terminally mediated age, a parallel world of never-ending
peripheralia, and of ongoing not-taking-place war.
The Politics of Skanking vs Dub for Art’s sake.
War is out now on Percepts. [Purchase]
