| Pan American - White Bird Release |
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Pan American isn't exactly evangelizing for the scene with this one, If your shoegazing little brother took a bunch of downers and consequently got really lost while taking all-night road trip through Pink Floyd's “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” you might receive a call from somewhere on a corner nearby Pan American's new Kranky records effort White Bird Release in the morning. And if you were experiencing some extreme serotonin burn-out from a brush with psychedelics the night before, you'd probably find the neighborhood pretty comforting when you finally found him with his hands in his pockets at a phone booth, shyly talking about existential philosophy with an invisible otherworldly being. The songs come and go like breezy spring nights by a digital seashore, with all the triteness that image entails, but nonetheless, there is something compelling about this relaxing ambient electronic solo effort by Labradford frontman Mark Nelson. The first track, "There Can Be No Thought of Finishing," serves as a good introduction to the album, presenting many of the timbres, textures, and elements used to compose the following songs. Early in the track, minimal organ noises form an ambient soundscape over a pulsing tremolo-modified white noise, which gradually builds into Nelson's digitally clipped whisper, familiar to aficionados of Richmond's postrock pioneers Labradford. The vocals emerge from behind a fog of reverb and unsynced delay. Midway through the track, the vocals fade into faint murmurs, which scarcely peek through a thick ocean of pink noises, fleeting hisses, and gentle crackles that, although quite abstract, remain calm and even quite pretty. Where many Kranky Records acts like to come to some sort of rising crescendo or conclusive harmony, Pan American likes to quietly disappear without being noticed, on this track offering some arrhythmic percussion as an intro to the somewhat more organized beat of the following track, "For Aiming At The Stars." Indeed, one merit of Pan American's new effort is seamlessness: like fish surfacing in a murky lake, the tracks flash before us and dive back into a depths, often before we even have consciously registered them; consequently, each piece seems more like a movement in a larger coherent musical effort than a stand-alone piece. Even the silences between tracks tend to emphasize the delicate interrelations between Nelson's minimal drones and hums. Even so, the track "So That No Matter" stands out from the others by re-introducing the vaguely dub-inflected sound heard on Pan American's earliest efforts, and even evoking a subtle feeling of anxiety with the somewhat more ethereal palette that typifies How Much Progress One Makes. Much of the album consists in instrumental tracks, which tend to sound like interludes, excepting that they neither follow nor precede anything shocking or particularly attention-grabbing; however, the final track, "In a Letter to H.G. Wells, 1932," introduces a regular rhythm as an early exposition and gradually builds a substitute for melody using pure sinewave synthesizer tones which mutate into a gentle crescendo of static underpinned by a slightly distorted groaning, suggesting something akin to song structure and demanding some attention when the album conclusively dims into a full minute of silence. In the growing field of post-postrock, there is some very boring ambient music out there -- and this is it. So if that's not your thing, go out get the new Deerhunter or something. But, here the textures are rich, yet subtle. The compositions can be interesting, but require devoted attention, lest they pass unnoticed like a nice night wasted indoors. Finally, as we have come to expect on Nelson's releases, the production is extremely impressive: sounds that could have easily seemed like mere sketches for songs weave themselves into a coherent, if somewhat hallucinogenic landscape for the ear and mind. 4 out of 5 Wooves Track Listing 1. There Can Be No Thought of Finishing 2. For Aiming at the Stars 3. Both Literally and Figuratively 4. Is a Problem to Occupy Generations 5. So That No Matter 6. How Much Progress One Makes 7. There Is Always the Thrill of Just Beginning 8. Dr. Robert Godard 9. In a Letter to H. G. Wells, 1932 |
