Sep
23
Tags:
Clicks + Cuts

Spinning in the stereo tonight is the second volume of Mille Plateaux's genre-defining compilation Clicks + Cuts.

Rhythm is texture writ large, peaks and valleys turned to pulse. Texture is rhythm rendered microscopic, (ir)regularity encoded and impressed upon the surface of sound. Where these two break and cleave apart, the click, smooth-faced, one-dimensional, textureless and out of time. The atomic test of a sound's durability, a black hole like a tiny diamond.

I've always had a predilection for music that sounded as if it was constructed under a microscope, and lucky for me there are labels like Mille Plateaux releasing albums like these. You have to love a label whose website has a "theory" section. Kit Clayton's contribution "Material Problem" is a stand-out track; he remains one of the best new artists of the last few years. His sound ranges from minimal electronic dub and microhouse (sorry) to full-on noise experimentation. Beautiful and even danceable. Also queued up is Rafael Toral's Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance. His music is somewhat akin to Christian Fennesz's: ambient, processed electric guitar explorations with occasional pop elements shining through the fog.

On an entirely different note, my The Amalgamated Sons of Rest (Will Oldham {Bonnie "Prince" Billy}, Jason Molina {Songs:Ohia}, and Alasdair Roberts {Appendix Out}) 12" arrived in the mail yesterday, and there is not a single sample, glitch, cut, or effect to be heard anywhere. The album was recorded from September 10-12, 2001, and I was secretly hoping that 9|11's bisection of the studio session would be an overwhelming psycho-musical element or the recording, but it isn't, to my ears atleast. Nonetheless, some very good simple somber folk music here.