Electronic
Barnacle Island
"Deeply Faulted Area Resembling an Upright Deck
of Cards" CD
KiraKira
Disc
Genres: IDM, electronica
May 10 - 16 2004 |
IDM is a genre riddled with such a colossal mass of artists that much
of it ends up sounding homogenous and unoriginal. Its innovators
have created truly unique works, but since then too many imitators
have flooded the scene. Electronic Barnacle Island, the
moniker of Aaron Noel, plays nice - but far from amazing -
electronica. The problem with this disc, wordily titled Deeply
Faulted Area Resembling an Upright Deck of Cards, is that it
doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done before. It's an
unspectacular selection of songs that are done well - but not
extraordinarily so.
EBI's tunes sound like a combination of Aphex Twin's
complexity, Mouse on Mars's melodic sensibility, and Autechre's
appealing experimentation. "Colourfloor," for example,
takes cues from early AFX (the non-ambient side) and combines
this sound with Niun Niggung-esque tunefulness. The
combination is quite pleasant. "Chance to be Hollow,"
meanwhile, wouldn't feel out of place on a Kreidler disc.
Overall, Deeply Faulted is far from the pros in terms of
musical quality, but its spirit and general pleasantness propels it
above most IDM imitation releases out there. This is worth a
shot, though it may not suffice for the true techno connoisseur.
82%
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 8 tracks, distributed by the
label, released 2003] |