Slowfoot Records is fast becoming one
of England’s foremost purveyors of essential experimental
soundscapes, putting out records that utilise wildly innovative
recording processes to make future-music built on the recognisable
foundations of genres such as jazz, dub and electronica. Crackle
is the seventh and latest release from Slowfoot (Snorkel, Robert
Logon, Oren Marshall) and continues the hyperbolic jazz-dub meanderings
of Snorkel through its (instrumental) drum and bass experimentations.
It comes as no surprise that one half of Crackle is Snorkel’s
Frank Byng (drums) who is joined by Nick Doyne-Ditmas (bass).
The duo don’t restrict themselves to their core instruments
and play a myriad of apparatus from Cornet to Hammond, Udu to
Organ as well lashings of electronic manipulations and eccentric
treatments to get the flourishing and dynamic result that is ‘Heavy
Water’.
‘Heavy Water’ is an album of
dense atmospherics and sparse instrumentation. Through a series
of studio experiments and improvisations the duo reference a wide
range of traditions and practices, moving between analog and digital,
acoustic and electric, lo-fi and hi-fi. Slow-motion wind and string
melodies labor over a trippy terrain of effervescent beats and
digital aqua blips to create an exciting and haunting piece of
electro-acoustic exotica with an almost trip-hop-esque groove.
The title track ‘Heavy Water’ sees fuzzed out bass
rumblings coalesce with ultra-sharp percussive clusters to create
a track that sounds like the skeletal remains of indie-band Elbow’s
‘Little Beast’ buried in a watery quagmire of digital
effects. On the Isotope 217-esque ‘Dust Monkey’ the
duo create a happening slice of underwater jazz-funk through the
utilisation of seriously warped-out bass, darting percussion and
elegiac cornet. Tracks like ‘Metal Fatigue’ and ‘Arc’
turn things down a notch and see Crackle explore the depths of
minimalistic electro-acoustic turbulence with a tangible 2001:
A Space Odyssey aesthetic.
Like a noir-ish soundtrack to a tip-toeing
pilferer scouring the backstreets of Bordeaux, the industrially
tinged French-jazz folk of ‘General Volume’ delights
whilst ‘Pale Eye’ sees these shifty noir-ish sounds
develop into a cinemascope affair laden with a slight middle-Eastern
tinge. The buoyant jazz-dub gathers pace on the groove-laden ‘Stone
Junction’ which plods along deliciously thanks to the double-bass
and towards the end of the album ‘Polaroid’ sees the
duo build their most fleshed-out offering of beat-laden warp-Jazz.
The track steadily builds from a subtle landscape of glitchy proto-industrial
jazz loaded with hypnotic Hammond melodies into a cacophony of
boisterous electro-afro dub. Like a microcosm of the album, this
track is a real journey and one to behold.
After the album closes with ‘Coda’,
an hypnotic ebb and flow of horn loops and bass mirroring the
wave patterns of a calm yet threatening ocean, one cannot help
but feel slightly detached from the outside world, such is the
power of ‘Heavy Water’. Anyone interested in the outer-limits
of afro-dub Jazz from the likes of HiM and Isotope 217 could do
a whole lot worse than dive headfirst into ‘Heavy Water’.
(KS)
For
fans of: HiM, Chicago Underground, Snorkel, Isotope 217, Sun Ra
meets King Tubby meets Soft Machine
|
