(02.03.07) Their Subtle Purpose is the latest episode in what has become a regular
broadcast from Databloem flagship act The Circular Ruins. The work of
Anthony Paul Kerby, who has in recent years produced a series of
atmospheric wide-screen recordings mainly under the TCR nom de disque, is a
study in low-profile craftsmanship. The palette of TCR embraces fully four
decades of electronic music. From the 70s and its roots in progressive rock
mellotronics, with the e-music and cosmic variants of Tangerine Dream
and Klaus Schulze, and on via certain 80s proto-ambient space auteurs through Namlook’s various Fax releases, and now beyond. This beyond is
developed further on new collaboration with label-mate Off the Sky (Jason
Corder), We All Fall Down, released almost concurrently. The latter
documents an encounter between Corder’s crystalline popped and crackled DSP
and Kerby’s heavier, denser analogue keyboard-driven textures.
From early excursions in 2002-3, Confluence and Realm of Possibility, on to
2005’s Degrees of Separation, Kerby has honed his upgrade of the E-music
tradition both top-down and bottom-up. On the one hand, through the sound
quality refinements offered by audio-technological development; on the
other, through minimal incorporation of his own take on the kind of
particulate audio-mulchery associated with microsound/glitch, as well as
the drone updates from the likes of Hypnos and associated deep space
satellites. Latest instalment Their Subtle Purpose represents very much a
consolidation and continuation of the TCR tradition as established on the
aforementioned albums. Opener “Seven Days,” for example, is unashamedly
lush immersion-fare that flaunts its wide-open pads whilst buffing up the
edges slightly with a grainy wash and shimmer, developing into a sky-high
one-chord drone-float over which a fluting keyboard semi-improvizes. TCR’s
stock-in-trade is this kind of rich retooling of classic e-music – deep,
often pulsating tracts, punctuated by suggestive samples, treatments, and
sundry peripheral micro-incursions. Part of the appeal of TCR’s work is in
its attention to the detail of the sound field. Deep drones are undergirded
by thick bass presences, surface harmonics and melodics ranging from
melancholic to mellow-dramatic, with dominant sonorities of shimmer and
glow – a downbeat take on pulse and atmo. This is the more consistent (and
unified of mood) assemblage of the two releases under scrutiny here, and
constitutes a worthwhile addition to a growing body of strong work from one
of electronic music’s more proficient eclecticists.
On We All Fall Down we find two musicianly approaches melded: Kerby,
somewhat Old Skool in his eschewal of laptop mediation; samples and pre-fab
loops dis-preferred in favour of keyboard-driven synthesis, and live playing
captured as source material. Off the Sky project coordinator Corder, on
the other hand, quintessential Homo Lapiens; sound palette consisting of
self-made audio samples from various sources strung together then
laptop-mashed, but with an idiosyncratic touch of heavily effected guitar
deployed as accompanying element. Off the Sky’s previous solo albums,
Gently Down the Stream and Caustic Light, provided exhibits of how these
two aspects of Corder’s approach work side by side. What we have on We All
Fall Down is the outcome of a felicitous encounter between representatives
of Nouveau E-music Romantico-modernist Composition, on one side, and Po-mo
Digitalia-driven Found Sound, on the other. For this collaboration Kerby
was apparently the recipient of several microsonic and glitch-infused
sample consignments from Corder, which he then used either as the ground,
or as the field upon or against which to create the larger sound tableau.
Opening tracks “5000 Visions” and “Your Unknown Hand” finds Corder’s
pop-play and click-kinetics rubbing up against APK’s sweeps and
texture-washes, the Off the Sky signature particularly noticeable. As the
set progresses, however, there is a sense of the soupier substance of
Kerby’s sonic architecture pervading, beginning on the title track and
spreading through subsequent tracks. Corder’s contributions start to
resemble garnish or underlay with Kerby resolving moods with his
melancholic mezzotint. “Burn for Those Who are Silent” and “And Then I
Remember” inhabit introspective if not isolationist shadowlands, the Sky
increasingly not Off, but dark-clouded, the auditory field enshrouded.
“Lasting Impression” provides a powerful if somewhat downbeat atmospheric
closure in terrain very much identifiable as that mapped out on Their
Subtle Purpose, with distant reverberations of tectonic shiftings and
crackling star-bursts run through by a mellifluous river of sombre sustains,
Corder’s presence seemingly having receded to the spectral.
We All Fall Down, though the outcome of both musician’s contributions,
ultimately reveals its compositional colours as a work that was processed
and finished by Kerby. With this is mind, it understandably feels rather
more like a TCR album with a slightly sunnier disposition – effected
through minimal Corderization – than a fully equal-partners collaboration.
The two are reportedly thinking of working together on another album on
which Corder does the final composition and finishing. It will be
interesting to compare and contrast outcomes, but in the meantime We All
Fall Down is a release of considerable engagement, which delivers a
powerful atmospheric hit. For those who struggle to reconcile a
predilection for 90s ambient techno and other post- electronica updates
with retro-referencing Berlin School-visits by newly emergent
practitioners, We All Fall Down might prove to be the light on the
Damascene road.
Both Their Subtle Purpose and We All Fall Down are out now on dataObscura.
