v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Hilary Hahn and Hauschka

Dexter Mix

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Vijay Iyer

Lone's Good Music

From Pitchfork:

Each track on Galaxy Garden is a four- or five-minute maximalist marvel in minimalist disguise. Always direct and propulsive, as if racing forward without the time to stop and admire their own brilliant detail work, Lone tracks still manage to juggle three or six or 10 layers of rhythm with disarming skill. One beat alone may be constructed from footwork-like kick barrages, clattering retro drum machines, wild hand percussion loops, and chimes and bells that accent the already intricate groove science.

Even at his "simplest," like the clank-clonk of "Cthulhu", which echoes the spare programming of late drum and bass, Cutler swirls all sorts of glittering rhythm baubles around the main beat. Because why risk boredom when you can go all-out? Like the best young dance producers of the moment, happily embracing abundance after years of miserly dance minimalism, Cutler's attitude seems to be that more is always better, provided it doesn't fuck up the groove.

And then there's the magic Cutler works on top of those grooves, a spell of simple heart-tugging melodies, show-off instrumental virtuosity, and pure sound effect pyrotechnics. As if constructing such head-wrecking beats was no big deal, he then attempts to throw in everything else he can, whether it's warm Detroit synth washes, plangent guitar licks, prog-like keyboard runs, hardcore synth stabs that trigger both nostalgia and an adrenalin rush, or all of them at once. "The Animal Pattern" is anchored by a silly bouncing ball of a keyboard pattern, guaranteed to produce grins. It's a good enough hook to carry someone else's whole track, but that doesn't stop Cutler from including spasms of acid house, delicate Kraftwerk-like runs, and whooshes like cartoon spacecraft taking off.

Melodic techno

From RA:

While Ideas from the Pond might first come across as congruent, in terms of the consistent prominence of synthesizers and their style of programming, Dundov actually travels diverse terrain here, often within the same track. "Distant Shores," for example, starts with an arresting plucking sound that soon has many layers weaving around it. It moves through various stages, building to a complex climax of dramatic, clattering drums and lyrical arpeggios, and then whispers out at the end, like a dream fading away. It's pretty central to his charm that Dundov can hit that kind of effect and and have it not sound trite.

This description of "Distant Shores," originally released in 2010 and the only pre-released single on the album, could just as well apply to the entirety of Ideas from the Pond. The individual tracks are microcosms of the whole. This could easily become boring over eighty minutes. But instead, they reinforce each other. The journey—and it does feel like a journey—is extended, fluently.

Whether you're gripped for the duration, though, largely depends on whether you're the kind of person who's engaged by the substance of what's washing over you. Ideas is full of detail and tiny motions. The counterpoint to the twinkling melodies is often linear, like in "Silent Visitor." In other places, like on "Brownian Motion," the counterpoint feels more vertical. But what keeps you locked in to Ideas' slow trajectory is Dundov's grasp of emotions. He simply makes you want to stay with the feeling.

There are many highs on the album. When "Together" swells it's not an exaggeration to say that the strength of its bittersweet jubilation can elicit a physical feeling. In "Tetra Float," the noises that sound like electrically charged metal crickets have an acutely surreal property, and act on the senses accordingly. The track is a powerfully ethereal 15-minute coda, with the final notes echoing the opening. (Which, incidentally, might just be one of my favourite openings to an album ever.) Ideas from the Pond has a humanity and a clarity of thought that enters boldly, continues as the album unfolds, endures as it quietens to its final sigh, and remains with you long afterwards.

 

Da Musik of TDY

From FACT:

Where Hazyville and Splazsh easily submitted to distraction or long passages of singular occupation, R.I.P shows Actress now fully in control and directing with ease ideas that have previously come together as instances within a much vaguer whole. In this, his third album, his music has significantly improved in its definition: while much of what drew people to his previous work was a willingness to be goaded and surprised by its unpredictability, there’s a relative lack of awkwardness in R.I.P’s progression, both among the tracks and in the balance of sounds found within each of them.

Opener ‘RIP’ sets the tone, its square wave flutes muddled with rough surface texture processing, a descending melody reminiscent (aptly) of D.I.E.’s ‘R U Married?’ cutting through periodically. It’s ghostly, bleached, floating in an endless monochrome space, and this aesthetic persists throughout the album, the sound washed into black, white and bone.

However, while saturation is still key to Darren Cunningham’s sound, the layers of instrumentation used are more distinct than ever here; the constituent parts are balanced extremely carefully. The Detroit allusions don’t stop with ‘RIP’; rather they accumulate, despite being delivered in unexpected keyboard voicings – strings, harps, guitar, warped bell tones, folk flutes, vox. Fundamentally timeless as such instruments are in so many cultures, it is hard to imagine their textures tonalities aging; subordinating them to the structures and aesthetics of the Detroit techno has inspired him has a sublime and disorienting effect.

New Beach House & Music Biz

Vallejo Nocturno 2012- Madison Park

From Billboard: Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally relax on a couch in the lounge of the Tribeca Hotel in New York, sipping cocktails and reminiscing about their misadventures as teenage record store geeks. Scally describes how he and his buddies would head to the Sound Garden record store on Thames Street in Baltimore, wasting hours flipping through $1 used CDs. Legrand actually had to commute to her geek shrine, taking a train from just west of Philadelphia to tiny Repo Records in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

"Kids these days," Legrand says with a smile, "they find things on the Internet. They don't get that joy of falling over something by accident . . . something that the too-cool-for-school kid at the record store would be like, 'You gotta check that out!'"

They don't act like it, but Legrand, 30, and Scally, 29, are those cool kids -- eloquent, attractive, impeccably dressed and intensely passionate about their craft. Their dream pop -- which has worked the neat trick of getting more dreamy and more pop the last six years -- has been championed fiercely from the start by in-the-know indie cognoscenti. The pair recorded Beach House's 2006 self-titled debut for barely $1,000, with Legrand on vocals and organ and Scally on guitar and keys, but the blogosphere adopted the effort and helped it move 24,000 copies through tiny Washington, D.C.-based imprint Carpark Records, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The duo's growth has been steady -- 49,000 units of second album "Devotion" (2008), followed by 137,000 of its third (and first for Sub Pop), "Teen Dream" (2010), according to SoundScan. The hushed, reverb-heavy tracks of "Bloom" (out May 15 on Sub Pop) are the group's most polished to date, and 2012 could prove to be its breakout year. "Bloom" will be available at major retailers and heard by live audiences of up to 5,000 when Beach House begins a yearlong stint of on-and-off touring.

Eri Yamamoto

Vallejo Nocturno 2012- Eri at An Die Musik

Last night had the pleasure once again, at An Die Musik, to experience the subtle and positive music of Eri Yamamoto who played solo piano from her own compositions from her new recording,The Next Page,  and from her many recordings during the last 10 years. Here is a view from a BBC review of her CD:

Eri Yamamoto was trained in Japan exclusively as a classical pianist and had virtually no exposure to jazz until her first visit to New York, where she witnessed a concert by veteran pianist Tommy Flanagan. After dedicating herself to jazz, she studied with Junior Mance, another highly respected blues-oriented pianist who was a fixture in early Dizzy Gillespie and Cannonball Adderley groups.

Both Flanagan and Mance are noted for their swinging but tastefully economical playing, so it comes as no surprise that Yamamoto’s approach is restrained, melodic and deeply rooted in the jazz tradition. However, she predominantly writes her own music and thus avoids the over-familiarity of standards. And she has been with her fine rhythm section (David Ambrosio on bass, Ikuo Takeuchi on drums) for 14 years and six recordings (counting this one), so her music is in the style of all the great jazz piano trios, with continual communication and interaction among the participants.

Detroit Techno Doc

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