BEATS with Dan Rule
Published: Music Australia Guide #73, February 2010.
Fourtet
There is Love in You
****1/2
There’s a wondrous duality to There is Love in You. The fifth longplayer from Keiran Hebden thrives on both the architectural and undefined; the intricately structural and intimately human. It’s a quality what gives this stunningly rendered set of songs its strength. In many ways, Hebden has returned to his 2003 masterwork Rounds here. Where recent efforts – 2008’s extended EP Ringer included – represented exciting, though unrealised explorations into rhythmic and structural experimentation, this is all about the intermeshing of details. Shimmering textures, melodies and acoustics ricochet through pulsing, expanded dance rhythms. Colour explodes into the sky. It’s ecstatic, affecting, disarmingly beautiful stuff. Believe.
Domino/EMI
Georgia Anne Muldrow
Early
****
Since floating into the consciousness with her 2006 avant-soul masterpiece Olesi: Fragments of an Earth, LA vocalist, producer and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow’s prodigious talents have been clear for all to see. Her unlikely, self-sung harmonies, sticky, groove-soaked productions and highly personal, spiritual lyrical tangents have revealed an artist on her own plane. As it’s title suggests, Early charts a collection of Muldrow’s previously unreleased material. In fact, she recorded and produced this fascinating 10-track album when only 17. It’s stunning. The sun-drenched soul and dense funk groove of Run Away and swooping harmonies of is neo-soul classic in the making.
Animatedcartunes/Fuse
Monkey Marc
As the Market Crashed
***1/2
There are some intriguing moments on As the Market Crashed, the solo debut from Melbourne-based producer, environmental activist and Combat Wombat soldier Monkey Marc. Recorded in his solar-powered studio, the record fuses eerie dub frequencies with Sub-Continental textures and classic, Headz-era downbeat. There are plenty of highlights. The stabbing Eastern strings and menacing bass underlays of The Evening Sun and the dubstep pressure of We’ve Really Fucked Up this Time are fine examples. That said, some of these cuts feel as though they’ve been tempered for the sake of consistency and balance. It makes for a rock-solid album, but one that could have done with a little more flare.
Omelette/Rocket
Eric La Casa
Zone Sensible 2/Dundee 2
****
French composer and sound recordist Eric La Casa has built a reputation as one of the country’s most accomplished purveyors of contemporary musique-concrete. Whilst turning his ear to various everyday phenomena, he expounds sound-worlds so dense, so vast and so immersive that it’s almost impossible to believe that their source material is occurring right beneath our earlobes. This body of work sees La Casa formulate some of his most engaging, downright beguiling work yet. The interwoven drones and buzzing netherworld of the 26-minute Zone Sensible 2 is composed entirely from recordings lifted from beehives. The three-part Dundee 2 is an unnerving study of city space. Enthralling stuff.
Room40/Vitamin
Rakim
The Seventh Seal
**1/2
The problem with Rakim’s long-awaited comeback isn’t with his flow. From he opening stanza of The Seventh Seal, one of hip hop’s greatest MCs is still on top of the craft. What he isn’t across is his beat selection. Like Nas has illustrated so many times, genius rhymes don’t always translate to genius records, and Rakim’s production team let him down here. The Seventh Seal was billed as a new vision for a troubled form and Rakim holds up his end of the deal; he’s as effortless as ever, spitting an electric stream of couplets without even breaking sweat. The inconsistent beats, synthetic hooks and glossy production values, however, totally miss the point.
SMC/Shock
