At Not Applicable, another roll of the dice finds trumpeter Alex Bonney teaming up with Will Glaser on percussion and Isambard Khroustaliov on abstract electronics for another session of post-futurist, post-AI music history. The premise behind this session is a fascinating one that is designed to make us think about how artificial intelligence will affect our production and appreciation of art and music as time goes on, and whether it could eventually make a worthwhile contribution.
As it opens, there is an ancient feel Put Emojis On My Grave, but it rubs shoulders with a rogue technology that makes for an unexpected combination. Tickles of metal, a wavering horn, sideswipe glitches and electronic murmurs evoke a post-battle languor. The mournful trumpet urges the hesitant, faltering percussion. They make slow ungainly progress and the electronic elements feel like bad directions; an imp-like subversion. We are misunderstanding something here, but are not quite able to see past the murk.
Alex’s strohviol (a kind of horned violin) makes a wheezing approximation of an old man stuck in a plastic sofa on “Goats On Helium”. The percussion leaps and spatters around, and the electronics add a kind of subdued panic. The pictures seem to change as the track progresses and a rudderless boat appears with people scrabbling to stay aboard. It feels like we are listening to the band on the Titanic; but as they give themselves up to their fate, so perhaps AI can change the outcome having learned so much from history. The bass recorder lends a more pastoral feel to “Drinking Songs Of The Quaidacabondish”, but mysteries abound in the abstract tribal clattering and we are led unbidden into a hidden enclosure. Things are calmer here, but more insinuating and that is partly down to the understated electronics. They are busy filling holes and lacing other sounds together; but if you don’t pay attention, a sudden dust-strewn roar appears.The trumpet is really disarming on “The Adiabiatic Flux Differentials Of The Id” and it plays like it is the last trumpet on Earth, sending not the last post but a first post out into a new society, constructed from ashes and memories of the old. It haunts a dystopian soundscape that the freedom of the Light Brigade blast of “1,000,000 Bongos” tries to correct. The watery percussion seemingly constructed from repurposed detritus is joined by interrupted emissions from an alternate distant civilisation. It is familiar yet twisted, and evokes memories borrowed and revised, then returned to provide further perspectives.
It is surprising how measured and gentle the album is in places, with final track “Blue @@ Tailed Jackrabbits” coming on like an elegy with the cymbal shimmer moving sinuously but self-assurededly. The track is snake-like and poised, finally in control of some sort of destiny, and it is a fitting conclusion to an album that runs roughshod through our musical preconceptions.The title is pretty hilarious and the album artwork of emojis disintegrating into a murky computer soup had me wondering what it would be like if each symbol that people use had a soundtrack. Would it be anything like this or the complete opposite? There is only one way to find out; so allow the tentacles of the Ancient Psychic Triple Hyper Octopus to slowly reel you in.
-Mr Olivetti-
