(05.20.07) The relationship between Ambient and Film music is pretty well established,
informally, going back to more obvious specimens like Eno’s Music for
Films, but also further. Assuming a retro-fit allowing through as “Ambient”
music conceptually consistent with Eno’s Declaration of Ambience that was
made prior to his laying it down, it’s a dalliance that’s been around since
the early days of cinema. Now The Buoys are here, making this ambi-film
coupling freshly explicit. Grillo Parlante simultaneously announces its
provenance and signifying strategies through its cover art, depicting a
semi-antique movie projector. The art-house cinema or museum installation
is familiar ground to these Leicester Buoys – Chris Cousin, Stu Smiths and
Steve Gibbs – whose endeavours in soundtrack and audio-visual production
have been considerably more extensive than their so far low-profile musical
projects.
Some descriptive specifics first. “Absolutely Nothing” starts off the set,
channeling Global Communication’s 76:14, Fennesz-ized for today’s
loop-lapping digizens. It even sounds like the actual chord progression
lifted from “8:07″/”5:23,” itself a borrowing from the TD-penned soundtrack
to Risky Business, though with sparse guitar twang surfing fibrous static,
as pulse’n’drone gently propels the whole. The following dubbed out grain
and almost-trip hop of “Aches” cement the sense of sonic kinship with the
mood-altering Eno + Labradford + Chain Reaction blend of fellow
UK-travellers in organic electronic genre hybridization, Marconi Union.
“Spider” has crystalline guitar offsetting a backdrop of processed
granularity, but an infelicitous combo of music box-like electric piano
plonking up and down an Indic pentatonic scale and a dead-hand 3-note
guitar riff means this headspace picture-show spool doesn’t get to revolve.
“Solar” adds a breathily wavering femme vox intoning a mantra (“Sometimes
I have to slip away”) with meagre melodic resonance, while a slow-mo chord
progression is reeled out, and vocal overdubs layered. Lights. Camera. But
no action. “New” takes lo-fi guitar-pluck for a plod with a few blips and
resonant slivers of textural oddities, and a return of the tremolo-reverb
guitar thematics. “Forman” hosts a pleasant piece of drone-harmonics
unfolding and refolding to more guitar spangle. “Wrist” ends the set with
vibe-like arpeggios, a flurry of crackle-flicker-rustle, and a re-alignment
with the post-rock string-pickers earlier identified – a hybrid of theme to
a psychological cop thriller set in the industrial Northern heartland and
glitch electronica.
So surveying the field post-listen, The Buoys’ skill in configuring the
sound-emotion interface is evident, but at various points during a highly
competent and often engaging debut, the fusing of the two elements of film
thematics and ambient music proves slippery, and ends up falling between
two stools. So tracks which may be characterized as ‘ambient music’ with
some progression and structure succeed. But on others where they seem to
fall back on routinized ground-field-figure perspective sound design, it
feels over-composed and mannered, erring towards title-theme drama gesture,
and they lose the plot, along with the listener. That said, there is
sufficient here to beguile, and to build on, in this micro-festival of
audio-postcards from the edge.
Grillo Parlante is out now on Bathysphere.
