The North Borders – Bonobo
One of downtempo’s original visionaries, Bonobo, a.k.a. Simon Green, continues to refine his sound and improve his already incredible abilities as a producer and DJ on his newest album The North Borders.
For a producer historically known for following a philosophy of linear progression in producing his electronic music, a surprising number of outstanding exceptions to that rule made their way onto North Borders. This can easily be seen on the album’s opener “First Fires,” a veritable masterpiece in its own right that manages to deliver a pensive meditation on fading memories and resurging passions.
The track slowly snakes its way into your ears, hesitant to show its full breadth as the entire rhythm isn’t even realized until after the first chorus, thus establishing the song’s emotional precedence even before structuring its rhythm, giving credence to Green’s traditional style of building songs from the ground up. The low timbre of featured vocalist Grey Reverend layered with the fuzzy tremolo of the synth combine to create an unbelievable warmth that can only be explained by Green’s penchant for marrying sounds to their perfect sonic soul mate.
The North Borders has been released to modest approval so far, but that seems fitting for an album that manages to capture such a massive variety of sounds and channel them into such a modest package.
Shaking the Habitual – The Knife
Swedish brother/sister experimental electronic duo The Knife recently released their first album in seven years, providing a jumbled array of jarring sounds that somehow always manage to culminate into a danceable groove.
Do not think that these songs come together by accident, however—the Dreijer siblings know what they are doing. Shaking the Habitual’s single “Full of Fire” is a nine-minute romp that is every bit complicated, textural and dark, and it will leave you exhausted by its conclusion. Olof, the brotherly half of The Knife, uses non-instruments for a lot of the rhythm on Shaking the Habitual, with “Full of Fire” featuring a pulsating cascade of sounds created by striking the open end of a PVC pipe. Like most of the tracks on the album, you have to hear it to believe it.
Following “Full of Fire” comes the somber “A Cherry On Top” that resembles Animal Collective’s “Cuckoo Cuckoo” in its meandering journey between soothing and shrill. A number of tribal influences can be found on the album, which sound even more interesting when they are interpreted through the industrial lens of Olof.
Karin Dreijer’s strong vocals are more confident than they have ever been, but they serve as a sort of retreat from the constant berating of the unsettling sounds used in every song, giving Shaking the Habitual a very dynamic sound despite its overly discordant nature.
Overgrown – James Blake
British dubstep darling James Blake has enjoyed fairly large-scale success, but he has a problem keeping the same fans with all the sudden changes he likes to make from album-to-album. Perhaps Overgrown, his latest effort, will serve to bring his dubstep devotees and gospel goslings together once and for all, as it seems to find itself in the elusive middle ground between CMYK and James Blake.
While Overgrown may serve as some sort of compromise for Blake, it’s not always the easiest listen as it is often hard to shake the feeling that Blake is striving to reach some sort of self-imposed measure of excellence.
The single “Retrograde” is easily one of Overgrown’s best offerings, making extensive use of Blake’s voice by sampling it into bite-sized chunks and layering it over his live vocals. By the time “Retrograde” draws to a close you realize that nearly all of the song is comprised from Blake using his brilliantly soft voice as an instrument, leaving you thoroughly impressed and thoroughly regretful of the many questionable songs that made it onto Overgrown.