Renowned synthesist Abul Mogard‘s latest release and first for Houndstooth is a selection of reworkings which take in some interesting artists from today’s outer fringes.
Abul clearly knows what works for him and he take the opening track, Aïsha Devi‘s “O.M.A”, and wraps it in some gorgeous drifting ambient tones. Aïsha’s voice slips and filters in and out of the sound and in and out of your ears as the slow motion pulse renders you helpless in a receding wave of cotton wool sound. The voice seems to come to you as in a dream, and that dream seems to be taking place through a screen of gauzy silk, a touch of treated horn adding an unexpected texture in the sun-dappled room of your mind. There is a scent of something in the air, but it is just out of reach.
Penelope Trappes‘s “Carry Me” follows a similar trajectory, but here the drones feel darker and more insistent, yet slower and more soporific. Penelope’s vocals are even breathier than Aisha’s and feel even less attached to reality, drifting in and out of the progression of what sounds like an organ. It kind of feels like a voice remembered from a past life and it infiltrates as the slow drones draw inexorably towards a crescendo, a crescendo wreathed in cloud and impending rain. The drones become heavier again on Nick Nicely‘s “London South” and hang around your head like dark clouds pregnant with rain. Nick’s vocals are swathed in distortion and reverb, twinkling like half-seen stars while the distorted drones sway rhythmically. There is a touch of melancholy that somehow increases the pressure and starts to overwhelm the vocals, which continue in their heartbroken way. The whole thing feels like slow motion footage of one of those enormous boat swings that used to be in amusement parks; Nick is watching the thrill of the riders, which is somehow offset by the darkness and impending weather that encircles them. Somehow instinctively, Abul knows how to keep our interest, even with the most repetitive of drones.A change of tone appears with Abul’s reworking of Becoming Animal‘s “The Sky Is Ever Falling”. Here, the pure and earnest vocals of Cinder are front and centre, and his natural vibrato cuts like glass through the faint accompanying drones. The voice is a pure spectral vision and the subtle synth insistence is the perfect accompaniment. Cinder’s voice has definitely improved with age; there is something magical about it and you can almost sense the rapt attention of the crowd as the piece slowly recedes and burns up into the aether.
Finally, Abul tackles Fovea Hex‘s “We Dream All The Dark Away”. The plaintive organ that starts the piece evokes a small and empty church sitting by the sea, sunlight drifting through high windows, dappling across worn pews. There is a beauty in the melancholy of Clodagh Simonds‘s pure, clear voice as you spy the rolling surf through the church’s open doorway. When Brian Eno‘s voice appears, multi-tracked to appear like Gregorian chants, the track takes on a meditative power that is part of Abul Mogard’s secret. He manages to draw you in with the simplicity and you feel the changes in tone more than hear them. The passage’s evolution is so slow, but you are locked into it and your senses are heightened to full appreciation.This is a soporific dream of an album that takes you on some lovely internal journeys. The clouds of lambent drones with which Abul has enshrouded the tracks add to them, and yet somehow make them his. It is rather irresistible.
-Mr Olivetti-
