This minimal, jazz-inflected dub release
is a titillating headphone gem for those who like their music crisp
and atmospheric. Rebuilding Vibeshas been intelligently constructed
from its component parts, each element
tidily organized by skilled producer Masayoshi Fujita, who
builds every piece meticulously out of session
recordings. And, as the cover and title suggest, the record
also serves as an extensive study of the vibraphone. Evident care
has been put into every track, with ample
attention allotted to each each sound's placement within the
compositions. This notion is confirmed right off the bat on
"Broken," in which a wiggly bassline, clicky beats, concise
hand-claps, and, yes, a soothing
vibraphone motif are all located wizardly in step with one another.
The record
being highly dub-flavoured, a large emphasis is
also placed on the bass and its interactions with the more
fluid vibraphone parts. This is especially obvious on delightful
"Waterfall," which employs a melodic double bass part
that endows the track with a glistening and mysterious
demeanour. More joyously studious micro-dub comes in the form of
smooth "Space for the Rebuilding" and "November," both of which
employ intriguing percussion constructed out of crackly static
chirps. However, as the album wears down, the lack of variety can
weigh down on the listener a fair bit -- the four instruments remain
the same throughout, after all, and the mood is a constant shady
noir. Curiously, it's the closer, "Dunst," which changes things up
most radically, eschewing the overt beats of its predecessors for a
quiet glitch track bolstered by a faint heartbeat rhythm. Somehow,
despite overtly departing from the album's main thesis, it's still
got that 2:00AM smoky nightclub aura to it.
Rebuilding Vibes is a mature
sort of experimental dub album, with the added element of sampled
vibraphone making for a cohesive if occasionally homogeneous record.
I conceive this as sort of a cross between FS Blumm and early
Dabrye, with other points of reference coming by way of early
Ninja Tune as well as more experimental labels like Mego and Raster-Noton.
