(09.20.05) When The Remote Viewer first started releasing music under this name it
was crunchy, beat-heavy IDM, very much in the vein of acts like Autechre
and Funkstörung. This was a clear departure from what the indie band
Hood were up to when Craig & Andrew were involved with them. Over the
intervening years The Remote Viewer’s sound has moved steadily away from
the upfront beats, quietening the whole thing down and integrating more
of the elements of what gets called “indie.” The album is book-ended by
songs sung by a man (presumably one of Craig or Andrew) and long-time
collaborator Nicola Hodgkinson lends vocals to other tracks along the
way. Guitars and electric piano sounds crop up throughout, alongside
dusty samples of strings and other acoustic instrumentation. This has
all gone through The Remote Viewer’s electronic blender, of course, but
the tampering sounds fairly restrained. No pointless effects workouts
or hyper-active editing, more like everything has been wrapped up in a
bit of quiet crackle and hiss.
Having said the beats have been pulled back, the whole album is still
very rhythmic. It’s just that the percussion is now quiet and far from
your standard set of drum kit sounds. On a couple of tracks a
metronomic bass drum holds time, but in both cases it is more
reminiscent of a dirty record popping in time to the music than the
booming pulse of a techno track. In other tracks sounds like household
surfaces being tapped and scuffed take the place of typical drum machine
sounds.
The album’s highlight for me is the opening track, “They’re Closing Down
The Shop.” It opens with a muted guitar strum and an almost subsonic
synth bassline following along. As mentioned above, it’s a song, but
not in a verse / chorus pop structure. A man sings fairly impenetrable
lyrics, all double-tracked so he’s singing right up against each of your
ears, while a nice tremolo Wurlitzer-style electric piano part fills out
the body of the track. It’s the end of this track that’s the clincher,
though. What could almost have been a very laid-back band recording
gives way to bubbling synth sounds that slip and slide unpredictably
about for a good minute or two.
The big risk with an album like this is that it’s so goddamn quiet that
it’s going to completely slip under the radar, or fail to make an
impression on first listen. In the current listening climate of
downloading and flicking through whole albums in minutes (just because
you can, dammit!), I hope people take the time to really savor Let
Your Heart Draw A Line. The Remote Viewer deserve at least that much.
Let Your Heart Draw A Line is out now on City Centre Offices.
