MANITOBA
Start Breaking My Heart
Leaf
NOBEKAZU TAKEMURA
Hoshi No Koe
Thrill Jockey
THE BIONAUT
Lubricate Your Living-Room
Matador
There are two divergent paths in current electronica – the beat-happy 4/4 thump-thump-thump of Electric Circus dancers and stoned Ibiza denizens, and the somewhat more experimental and sophisticated, of which the following three are prime examples.
Manitoba’s invigorating debut album Start Breaking My Heart, is intelligent music for intelligent people. Toronto’s 22-year-old Dan Snaith, the driving force behind Manitoba, is himself no slouch in the smarts department – he has a master’s degree in pure mathematics.
Combining elements of horn-based jazz and looping electronics, Start Breaking My Heart meets somewhere in the middle, between the opposite extremes of simplistic minimalist melody and difficult abstract beat trickery. When all the pieces fall into place, as they do throughout the album’s 10 tracks, the effect is incredible. Even Snaith may never surpass the likes of "Mammals vs. Reptiles," horns blaring over an insistent scratchy beat that topples over itself, or the rich vibes of the harp-laden cinematic rave-up "Paul’s Birthday." Whether he actually does is irrelevant – Start Breaking My Heart is the type of debut record for which the terms "auspicious" and "groundbreaking" are usually reserved.
Kyoto’s digital prankster Nobekazu Takemura looks set to become 2001’s most prolific electronica artist, with the scheduled foreign release of seven other records following his newest American release, Hoshi No Koe, and its already out-of-print companion piece Sign. With a title that translates as "notes from a starry sky," Hoshi No Koe is a child-like discovery of the sounds a computer is capable of – fittingly Takemura’s past recording moniker was Child’s View.
Considering the amount of music Takemura plans to release this year, it’s not entirely surprising that Hoshi No Koe grows slightly tired by the time the pretty but inconsequential lullabye "The Voice Of A Fish" rolls around. That said, Hoshi No Koe does offer up two of Takemura’s finest moments to date: the lengthy persistent throb of "Anemometer" and the amazing "Sign," with its beat composed of skipping CDs.
Jorg Burger, himself a prolific producer having released records under the names burger/ink, The Modernist, Trinkwasser, Geometric Farms and The Bionaut, receives the greatest hits treatment on Lubricate Your Living-Room, a compilation of The Bionaut’s releases between 1993 and 1997. While demonstrating the primary downfall of electronic music – the technology used to make the music is almost instantly obsolete, occasionally taking the music with it – Lubricate Your Living-Room remains relevant.
"Electric Campfire (In A Neo-Ackerman Style)" cross-breeds early ’90s shoegaze with Aquamarine’s synthesized vocals in a slow spacey progression that pre-dates Halou by several years, and "Student Bashing At The Seaside" plays nicely as a Trainspotting come-down. Lubricate Your Living-Room overcomes the occasional aged clunker by maintaining that regardless of the technology at hand, it’s the tunes that are most important.
MANITOBA 4/5
NOBEKAZU TAKEMURA 3/5
BIONAUT 3/5
MARK HAMILTON
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