Thursday, July 2, 2015

ambient archaeology




Genealogy of ambient with multiple lines of descent - something I did for Details in 1993. The text / timelines. not the actual design. 



AMBIENT / CHILLOUT thinkpiece /feature package with SEEFEEL, MAIN, STEREOLAB and TELEPATHIC FISH 
Melody Maker, 1993 

by Simon Reynolds

    In '93, 'ambient' is everywhere.  The span of music that 
calls itself 'ambient', or is ambient-tinged, is staggering. 

     In the post-rave zone, there's Aphex Twin, Orbital, 
Bandulu and the Infonet crew, R & S's Apollo offshoot 
(Biosphere, Jam & Spoon), Sandoz, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia, 
and the triumvirate of Peter Namlook/Dr Atmo/Mixmaster 
Morris.  In a post-Orb stylee, there's the sometimes beatific 
(Original Rockers, Higher Intelligence Agency), mostly boring 
'ambient dub' on the Beyond label.  And there's a yawning and 
yawnsome expanse of "electronic easy listening" (Sven Vath, 
Future Sound Of London, the Recycle Or Die label etc) - 
pseudo-mystic bilge that you too could cobble together, with 
some bird-song samples, 'cosmic' synth-sounds, a 24 track 
studio and a spliff. 

     On the post-indie front, there's Stereolab's muzak-of- 
the-spheres; the ice-olationist tundra-scapes of Main, Thomas 
Koner, Ice, Scorn and Lull; the post-MBV locked grooves of 
Seefeel and Moonshake; the post-Eno art-rock of Papa Sprain 
and Bark Psychosis.  And if you really want to stretch the 
definition a bit, you could add the sampladelic Spector of 
Saint Etienne too. 

     So what does it mean to align yourself with 'ambient' 
these days?  Rock starts to take on an ambient tinge almost 
as soon as it departs from 'naturalistic' recording, the 
simulation of a live band.  If you go down the path of using 
the studio-as-instrument, what Eno called the creation of a 
"fictional psycho-acoustic space", chances are that you'll 
finish up making ambient. 

     In some ways, ambient is the ultimate destination of the 
psychedelic impulse. Technically, in that psychedelia 
pioneered stereo and the illusion of spatial dimension; 
spiritually, in that ambience is the heavenly end of the 
psychedelic trip. Where acid rock plunges into into the 
cosmic beyond, ambient is more like treading water, drifting 
in cosmic/oceanic womb-space. For instance, Spacemen 3 
started out trance-rocky, then got progressively more ambient 
and nirvanic ("Playing With Fire", Spectrum and 
Spiritualized).  The blurry zone between psychedelia and 
ambient is a bit like the way abstract art is always on the 
verge of lapsing into mere decorative art (in rock terms, 
think of the way MBV evolved from the action-painting chaos 
of "Isn't Anything" to the almost ambient placidity and 
prettiness of "To Here Knows When"). 

     The current invocation of 'ambient' as buzzword and 
rallying cry is really a quiet revolt against grunge, a 
nouveau hippy riposte to grunge's punk revivalism. It recalls 
that moment in the late Eighties when former hardcore/noise 
musicians decided it was more radical to whisper rather than 
scream: Cowboy Junkies (who were tres ambient in that they 
recorded in a church), Hugo Largo (who abandoned drum beats 
and riffs), Swan's reverberant offshoot Skin, etc.  The 
ambient impulse is an anti-rock gesture, or rather a 
rewriting of the meaning of rock: rock, as in a cradle 
motion, or rock as in petrified, stoned immaculate.  Ambient 
is un-rock'n'roll because it's built up by layers, whereas 
rock is about jamming: instruments fit together like cogs, 
forming a rhythmic engine that kicks your ass. Ambient is 
kind to your ass. It's sofa rock, Erik Satie's "furniture 
music". 

     For rave musicians, pledging allegiance to 'ambient' is 
a revolt against a different kind of hardcore: manic 
breakbeat-driven 'ardkore, which has alienated droves of 
burned out ravers, encouraging them to abandon speedy E for 
dope.  Ambient techno is dance music for the sedentary, for 
oldsters who want to chill out rather than shake that butt. 

     And the future? Well, the anti-grunge guitar-based 
experimentalists, and the post-rave sampladelic artists seem 
to be merging into a single, seamless continuum of 
progressive music.  I have seen the future, and it's flat on 
its back. 


OPEN MIND/TELEPATHIC FISH: THE AMBIENT TEA PARTY 

    "Basically, what we're trying to create at our events is 
a massive bedroom. After raves, we used to chill out in each 
others' bedrooms. Now we've turned the bedroom into a party." 

     So says Kevin Foakes of Open Mind, the organisation 
behind the 'Telepathic Fish' series of 'ambient tea parties'. 
He and colleagues/flatmates Chantal Passamonte, David Vallade 
and Mario Tracey-Ageura formed Open Mind last summer, after 
becoming disillusioned with rave culture's "harder, faster" 
ethos.  The first party was in their East Dulwich flat, and 
featured DJ-ing by ambient ally Mixmaster Morris of The 
Irresistible Force. It was a huge success, obliging them to 
holding the sequel outside the flat. There've been four so 
far, and the fifth is taking place this Sunday in Brixton 
(for details, see below). Open Mind hope to turn Telepathic 
Fish into a monthly event by Xmas, despite problems in 
finding suitable venues. 

    "Traditional clubs just don't work," say Chantal.  Most 
promoters are interested in people getting overheated so they 
buy overpriced drinks. "We're into tea rather alchohol!". 
The flyer for one event even incorporated a tea bag! 

    So what is an average tea party like? 

    "There's an abundance of mattresses. Lots of soothing 
lights - strictly ultraviolet, no strobes.  Lots of oil 
projectors, computer graphics." Where your standard 'ardkore 
rave is stress-makingly staccato (cut'n'mix beats, epileptic 
strobes), Telepathic Fish is all undulating ebb-and-flow , a 
wombadelic sound-and-light-bath.  The last event was styled 
after a fish-tank, and Sunday's party will boast "deep sea 
decor".  The music ranges from post-Orb ambient to Dead Can 
Dance and Main. And the punters?  Some do floaty dancing, 
most simply get recumbent and spliff up. 

    "We went clubbing a lot last year," says Kevin, "and by 
the end it got so fast, it was like you had to work to have a 
good time." Where 'ardkore's slogans often mimic the language 
of graft and toil ("get busy", "work it up", "shovelling 
tunes"), Open Mind don't like the 'work hard, play harder' 
mentality (where you're a slave to the rush hour, then rush 
your nut off at the weekend).  "People who can afford to go 
to a 15 quid rave have all this aggression to get out of 
their systems from working all week.  The crowd we attract is 
more laidback and bohemian".  The feud between 'ardkore and 
ambient is like the split between the mods, who were 
city-loving, insomniac amphetamine-freaks, and the hippies, 
who were into dope, pastoral indolence and sleep, and 
declared 'speed kills'.  And so Mario will refer derisively 
to "gurning E-heads", while Chantal talks of the ambient 
thing as being "more organic.  Our parties are as close to 
getting it together in the country as you can get in London." 

     Of course, ravers have been chilling-out informally 
since the early days of rave, inventing their own rituals to 
enhance the post-E afterglow and cushion the come-down. 
"People are doing this in their bedrooms all round the 
country," says Chantal. "But we decided to do it for 300, 500 
people, not just 10".  And they're not alone. There are 
similar outfits all over Britain: Sonora in Glasgow, Sunday 
nights 8 til 12; Oscillate in Birmingham, every second 
Friday; London's Zero Gravity (every other Wednesday at 11 
Wardour St) and Dream Time Environment (midnight Friday right 
through to midnight Sunday, at 67, West Yard, Camden Lock). 

    Open Mind have larger ambitions. They're bringing out an 
ambient magazine, Mindfood, whose first issue contains 
articles on Terence McKenna and floatation tanks.  And 
they're linked with an ambient specialist record shop, 
Ambient Soho (5 Berwick St, London).  For idlers, they're 
pretty fucking busy. 

     'Telepathic Fish IV: The Fishing Trip' is this Sunday, 
October 3, from 12 noon to 10 pm, at Cooltan, 372 Coldharbour 
Lane, Brixton. For info, call 081 693 9903 



MAIN 

    Mick Harris, who left Napalm Death to form ambient dub 
terrorists Scorn (plus his own pure ambient side project 
Lull), claims that "if you play early Eno records from the 
70's and turn them up really loud, there's a darker edge to 
it all, it becomes really quite unnerving." It works the 
other way round, too: Gibby the Buttholes once said that if 
you play thrash-metal really quiet, it sounds ambient. 

     It's this zone of un-easy listening over which Main 
currently rule supreme.  Formed by Robert Hampson of Loop, 
Main explore the kind of post-catastrophic soundscapes that 
always seemed the logical aftermath for Loop's apocalyptic 
trance-rock.  Shifting the emphasis from riffs towards 
guitar-generated and environmental timbres, Main owe a fair 
amount to Eno's original ambience, although Robert insists 
"we take it a lot further." 

     Robert's pretty scornful of the current vogue for 
ambient. He's never liked hippies, always preferred the 
proto-punk nihilism of The Stooges or MC5 or the post-punk 
gloom'n'doom of The Pop Group and Mark Stewart.  "I can't go 
along with the hippy attitude, you do need a bit of ugliness 
and confrontation.  'Cos we don't all love each other, we 
don't want to embrace everything." 

     And yet he talks of how Main "want to embrace our 
environment, not retreat from it like ambient techno. Main 
music reflects the way we're surrounded by noise, all the 
hums and buzzes of traffic, planes, road drills, the constant 
clatter you can never really escape".  The band use what The 
Young Gods' called 'urban sonorities": a new track is based 
around a backing drone, "the sound of a main road, processed 
through an effect so that it's sounds really beautiful." 
Robert describes the recent Main instrumental EP "Firmament" 
as "musique concrete dub", reflecting his love of 
drone-theorists like La Monte Young, Terry Riley and 
Karlheinz Stockhausen (Mains' first EP "Hydra" was dedicated 
to the Kraut electro-acoustic composer). 

     Kevin Martin has coined the term 'Isolationist Music' to 
describe the likes of Main. "I dunno about that," says 
Robert. "But I do feel isolated musically.  Rock is getting 
really stale again".  If he has one "comrade in arms", says 
the Main-man, it's Thomas Koner, maker of austerely beautiful 
meditational music, that's often inspired by Antarctica. 
"Emotionally, his music stabbed its mark on me, just the fact 
that such extremely minimal music could stir so many visual 
feelings. I thought 'Nunattak' was the most beautiful thing 
I'd heard in ages.  Then 'Permafrost' took the minimalism to 
its logical extreme." A Main/Koner collaboration looks set to 
happen next year.

     Main's twin EP's "Dry Stone Feed" and "Firmament" are 
out now on Beggars Banquet. 


SEEFEEL 

   "Ambient's lost its definition," reckons Mark Clifford of 
Seefeel. "Now it just means anything that's droney and 
drifting, anything that isn't too bothered about songs. But 
it's good that there's so many different meanings to 
'ambient' now.  The term's either been emptied of meaning, or 
it's been filled up with lots of meanings." 

     Seefeel's billowing bliss-rock tapestries illustrate how 
'ambient' has become a sort of horizon for post-Cocteaus/ 
post-MBV bands, or as Mark puts it, ""any band that want to 
go beyond the constraints of 3 minute punky pop, beyond 
choruses".  So is 'ambient' the final death of punk? 

     "We did a gig where we played one truly ambient piece, 
almost like a whale song, and this old punk shouted 'bring 
back the Sex Pistols'. It seemed such a negative and old- 
fashioned comment. That really inspired us to go even 
further. Anyway, someone like Richard James is modern punk, 
his music has that DIY, lo-fi naivete. That said, most 
ambient techno is really safe and boring." 

     On their latest EP "pure, impure", Seefeel got Aphex to 
remix "Time to Find Me", and a full-fledged collaboration is 
in the pipeline. With "Time to Find Me", Richard James paid 
them a rare compliment, in that, rather than junking almost 
all of the original track as usual (see Curve, Jesus Jones) 
all the sounds he used came from Seefeel's song. 

     Seefeel are also highly influenced by ambient's cousin, 
dub reggae. But does this mean that today's ambient, like 
dub, is 'just' music to get stoned to? 

    "I'd be upset if the only way you could get into Seefeel 
is to get wasted. A lot of the mediocre ambient techno is 
like that. Actually, a good litmus test for ambient is: if 
it's good, you don't need to get stoned to enjoy it". 

     Seefeel's "pure, impure" EP is out now on Too Pure. 
Their debut LP "Quique" is out in late October. 


STEREOLAB 

     The first of Stereolab's two albums of 1993, "Space Age 
Bachelor Pad Music", paid homage to an earlier genre of 
proto-ambient easy listening: the 'exotica' and stereo- 
testing records of the Fifties/early Sixties, artists like 
Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. 

     "I've been into stereo test, sound effects and Moog 
albums for a while," says the Lab's Tim Gane.  "I like the 
pseudo-scientific language on the sleeves.  Our name actually 
comes from a hi-fi testing label, Stereolab, an offshoot of 
Vanguard.  We liked the name 'Stereolab', cos it's 
yesterday's idea of 'futuristic', but today it seems quaint 
and kitschy.  With Martin Denny & Co, I like the idea of 
taking something that was utilitarian and very much part of a 
specific era, and taking it out of that context so that it's 
this alien music.  Plus, it fucks up the official history of 
rock, the fact that amazing records came out in 1961!" 

     So is 'exotica' a sort of illegitimate father to Eno's 
ambient? "Well, those were the first records designed to make 
you sleep. But Stereolab are more into minimalism than 
straight ambience". By minimalism, Tim means everything from 
John Cage and La Monte Young's Theatre Of Eternal Music to 
the Velvets to Krautrock (he's a big fan of Neu and Cluster's 
"meditative doodling").  Stereolab followed one of the more 
obscure Krautrock tangents by linking up with Nurse With 
Wound, whose Steve Stapleton has a massive archive of German 
avant-rock.  For the recent "Crumb Duck" 10 inch, Stapleton 
Faust-ified a Stereolab song using tape-manipulation 
techniques. 

     Then there was their homage to the grand-daddy of 
ambient, the 7 inch single "John Cage Bubblegum".  "That was 
just a way of saying you can like avant-gardists like Cage 
and you can like bubblegum like The Archies, and you can even 
combine the two.  Because they're both extremes in their own 
way." Similarly, on the 'Bachelor Pad' album, Stereolab's 
titles are meant to evoke imaginary genres that really should 
exist, e.g. "Avant-Garde MOR" . Another fictional genre that 
Gane & Co are currently hatching is 'ambient boogie': "I like 
the idea of taking an almost Status Quo bass-riff but looping 
it, making it just go on." Generally, Gane says the band are 
interested in making "rock music without rock dynamics, no 
solos, just ebb and flow", as on their brill new LP 
"Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements". 

     Stereolab have a peculiar, rarified approach to music - 
they really are like boffins in a soundlab, gene-splicing 
in order to create mutant styles. But so long as the results 
are captivating, who gives a tinker's cuss? 
     Stereolab's latest LP is out now on Duophonic. 


PROPHETIC MOMENTS IN AMBIENT'S EVOLUTION 

JOHN CAGE - "4' 33''" . Erroneously known as 'Silence', 
Cage's composition instructs the pianist to do nothing, 
forcing the audience to listen to the barely audible noises 
of the environment. 

TERRY RILEY - "In C" . A symphony in one note, sifting and 
shifting layers rather than developing melodically. 

JIMI HENDRIX -"1983, A Merman I Should Turn To Be/Moon, Turn 
The Tides...  gently gently away" ("Electric Ladyland, 1969). 

MILES DAVIS - "He Loved Him Madly" ("Get Up With It", 1975). 
Teo Macero's soundscape production is cited by Eno as the 
inspiration for "On Land". 

NEU! - "Leb Wohl" -("Neu! 75).  Krautrockers switch off the 
motorik engine and bask in a seaside idyll. 

KING TUBBY -"King Tubby's Special 1973-1976".  Along with 
Perry, Pablo, Far I etc, this dub-meister paralled Eno in the 
use of echo to create spatial, sacrosant, meditational music. 

JON HASSELL -"Dream Theory In Malaya" LP (1981).  Trumpeter 
pal of Eno's and pioneer of "Fourth World" ethnodelia. 

JAN GARBAREK - "Paths, Prints" LP (1982). Or anything else on 
cooler-than-thou jazz label, ECM (motto: "the most beautiful 
sound next to silence"). 

BRIAN ENO - "On Land" LP (1982).  Uncle Bri's ambient 
pinnacle: no pitches, just timbres, plus sounds of sticks, 
stones, and insects. 

ARTHUR RUSSELL -"Let's Go Swimming" (1987). Aqua-funk by NY 
avant-gardist who loved disco's hynpnotic repetition. 

MY BLOODY VALENTINE -"Instramental" (bonus 7inch with "Isn't 
Anything", 1988).  Erik Satie-esque glide guitar drifts like 
a disconsolate ghost over junglistic hip hop beats. 



RECENT PARAGONS OF AMBIENT 

POM MI RU - "Koh Tao" (from Infonet CD comp. "Beyond the 
Machines").  Bandalu + hippy guitarist = pastoral bliss. 

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE - "Flying High" LP (Rising High) 

THOMAS KONER - "Permafrost" LP (Baroni) 
Wanna chill out? Try these hypothermic wastelands. 

METALHEADS - "Angel" (Synthetic 12").  Ambient ardkore?! 
Hyped up jungle beats collide with lush, languishing jazz- 
tinged melancholia worthy of David Sylvian's "Gone to Earth". 

ORIGINAL ROCKERS -"The Underwater World of Jah Cousteau" 
(from 'Ambient Dub II', Beyond). Oceanic dub: Zion = 
Atlantis. 

PETE NAMLOOK -"Air" LP (Rising High) 

SANDOZ - "Digital Lifeforms" LP (Touch) 




Ambient the Buzzword of 1993 
Christmas 1993 overview mini-essay
Melody Maker, December 1993

by Simon Reynolds


    Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works 1985-92" wasn't just the
most sheerly beautiful album of '93, it was also the most
significant. It signalled a Zeitgeist-shift, pointing the way to a
whole new future.  First, by being so accomplished, it gave credibility
to the then emergent genre of ambient techno (a.k.a intelligent
techno, electronic listening music etc). It singlehandedly won over
many indie fans who hadn't really listened to much techno, thus
encouraging them to seek out more.  Second, it's had a profound
effect on the more progressive elements in British indie-rock, the
results of which will really BLOSSOM next year.  The fact that bands
as diverse as Curve, Jesus Jones, Saint Etienne and Seefeel rushed
to submit their songs to Richard James' remix-mutilation showed how
keen the smarter indie popsters are to get in on the NEW THING.
     
"Selected Ambient" and James' other releases (Polygon Window's
"Surfing On Sine Waves", AFX's "Analogue Bubblebath 3" etc) weren't
the only proof that techno has matured into an aesthetically (and
commercially) viable album-based genre.  There were splendid
offerings from Sandoz, Orbital, Bandulu, Reload, Black Dog, Pete
Namlook, Mixmaster Morris and more.  But inevitably, the ambient boom
has also opened the floodgates for a deluge of mediocre spliff-and-
sofa muzak (B12, Sven Vath and droves more Vangelis-with-a-beat
types).  Another dubious development was 'ambient dub': sometimes
wonderfully spacey (Higher Intelligence Agency, Original Rockers),
more often vaporously insipid sub-Orb stuff.  Like trance, ambient
techno has reached something of a dead end; hopefully the sharper
operators will step sideways into more interesting territory.  Aphex
Twin's long-awaited sequel "Selected Ambient Works 2" - a double-CD
of sombre minimalism and music concrete sound-paintings -will blow a
lot of the competition out of the water.

     As for the indie avant-garde, 'ambient' is useful as a loose
umbrella term for any band that deploys the studio-as-instrument and
sampling in order to imagine some kind of FUTURE for rock (one that
doesn't rely on blues-rock riffs, glam postures or punky-pop
choruses).  Perhaps the most techno-affiliated of these bands were
Insides and Seefeel (who actually linked up with Aphex on the sublime
"pure, impure" EP).  Both bands demote the guitar to just another
iridescent thread in their swoony tapestry of sampled and sequenced
sound.  Disco Inferno ditched their axes for samplers, while the
art/cosmic rock of Bark Psychosis and Papa Sprain is also ambient-
tinged.  On two superb 1993 LP's, "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" and
"Transient Random Noise Bursts", Stereolab explored the unlikely
links between early 60's muzak and late 60's drone-rock (Velvets, La
Monte Young).  The 'Lab also imagined 'impossible' but desirable
genres like "Avant-Garde MOR" and "John Cage Bubblegum".  Other bands
took Eno's legacy in a chilling, as opposed to chill-out, direction.
This "isolationist music" or "uneasy listening" ranges from Ice and
Scorn's post-apocalyptic dub-metal, to Main and Thomas Koner's
lustrous, meditational soundscapes.

     The upshot of all this is that British avant-rock and left-field
dance are coalescing into a single, seamless vanguard of progressive
music.  The zone in which they commingle is the fertile hinterland
between the dreampop of MBV, A.R. Kane and 4AD (so many techno
artists cite the Cocteaus as an influence!), the
Kraftwerk/Detroit/Warp techno lineage, and dub reggae's echo-drenched
expanses.  The resultant halcyon, herbalistic sound is the fulfilment
of Erik Satie's fantasy of "furniture music": sound that enhances and
tints your life like a fragrance.

     "Ambient" is the rallying cry of those in revolt against two
different kinds of 'hardcore'. For indie-rockers, it's a revolt
against grunge (hardcore punk gone metallic and bluesy); for techno-
heads, it's a revolt against 'ardkore's manic frenzy.  After the
false start of 1991's ambient house craze, chill-out clubs and events
made a comeback this year, thanks to outfits like London's Open Mind.
The latter are responsible for the 'Telepathic Fish' parties:
"massive bedrooms", strewn with mattresses and bathed in wombing
lights, where burned-out ravers recline, spliff up and mellow out.
Open Mind's DJ's mix Irresistible Force and Pete Namlook with Main
and Dead Can Dance.  Where grunge offers crude catharsis and ardkore
ravers find release through going mental at the weekend, the ambient
response to our increasingly grim, anxiety-wracked world is to seek
refuge in a sacro-sanctuary of sensuously spiritual sound.  Ambient
caresses where grunge/ardkore concusses.  (That said, one of the most
interesting developments of late '93 was 'ambient ardkore', bands
like Metalheads and Foul Play who fuse jungle beats and langorous
textures to bizarrely beatific effect.)

   Yes, it's all a bit hippy. Is ambient the final death of punk?
Does quiet music = quietist politics (Stereolab would say no).  Given
given the choice between Rage Against The Machine and soft-machine-

music, though, there's only one response: BLISS ON!



sidepanel to some kind of big feature package on ambient in Melody Maker

In the UK right now, avant-rock and left-field dance are
coalescing into a continuum.  On one side, there's the likes of
Seefeel, Disco Inferno, Main, Stereolab, Moonshake, Papa Sprain,
Insides (formerly Earwig), Ice, et al, truly independent bands who
have very little to do with the trad connotation of "indie" (i.e.
scrawny Luddite grot).  On the other side, you have post-rave
innovators like The Aphex Twin, Orbital, Sandoz, etc, who are
reaching beyond the dancefloor to a new audience of disenchanted
ex-indie fans.  In this new state-of-play, an "indie" band like
Seefeel patently has far more in common with a "techno" artist like
Aphex than either has with its supposed genre-peers. Which is why
they've collaborated with each other rather than, respectively,
Slowdive or Sven Vath.

     For better or for worse, the word that's come to crystallise the
merger of neo-psychedelia and post-aciiied is "ambient".  For bands
looking to transcend indie rock, "ambient" signifies going beyond
riffs; for the techno-heads, "ambient" means leaving behind the dance
beat.  But ambient isn't inappropriate, because all this post-rock
and post-rave stuff (the stuff worth cherishing in '93) does
ultimately descend from Brian Eno (with a few extra genes spliced
from dub reggae).  The original soundscape gardener, Eno pioneered
the techniques that are the foundation of progressive Nineties music:
the studio-as-instrument, tape loops (or its easier, quicker modern
equivalent, sampling), the use of effects and treatments so that
timbre and texture is more important than chords or riffs.  Any music
that exploits the studio, that doesn't sound "naturalistic" (i.e.
like you're five rows from the front at the Falcon) is in some sense
Eno-ite. To put it another way: ambient is the polar opposite of
grunge.

     Of course, the likes of Papa Sprain and Stereolab probably have
only an indirect relationship to Eno, as mediated through A.R. Kane
and My Bloody Valentine, who themselves drew more from the sources
that inspired Eno (Can, Velvet Underground, Hendrix, dub) than the
man himself.  MBV, in particular, paved the way for the sampladelic
non-rock of Seefeel and Moonshake (whose last record featured
virtually no guitar).  Kevin Shields said that it was "the weird
noises on hip hop records" that goaded them towards "Isn't
Anything"'s guitar-reinvention.  Then MBV fell under the spell of
rave: "Loveless" saw them sampling their own feedback and looping
beats and basslines.  Along with the Primals' "Higher Than The Sun",
MBV's "Soon" showed that it's the subliminal influence of rave
culture that gives British avant-rock the edge over its US
counterpart.  The Krautrock deluges of Mercury Rev, the epileptic
eclecticism of Thinkin' Fellers and Pavement, are great, but they're
hidebound by garageland, by the Luddite limits of bass/gtrs/drums. US
avant-rock is crippled by the abiding delusion that "disco sucks".
   
  Because they both inhabit a Eno-ite universe, the UK's
avant-rock and neo-techno units are inevitably merging into a single
phalanx of progressive whatever-you-wanna-call-it. For this kind of
music, 'ambient' is a sort of horizon: the outer limit of
form-dissolving halcyon chaos that it strives for, but doesn't
necessarily reach.  Because sometimes it's better to travel than to
arrive.                                 

































No comments: