Any group with a name like I Work In Communications has to be worth some of your time and with the title of Kiss My Emoji Ring, you kind of know that this album isn’t going to be anything too heavy.
In fact, the album contains a veritable cornucopia of lovely if irreverent electronic-based experiments that veer all over the map, allowing the three players plenty of scope to engage the listener as well as each other.
Kiss My Emoji Ring is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Mathius Mathiszik and most of the tracks compiled here started off as improv guitar pieces, mangled and manipulated and then sent to drummer Dave De Rose to lay down some sort of rhythmic narrative before George Crowley blew some sax over the top. It is one of these modern compositional techniques that sounds as though it shouldn’t work, but appears seamless here.The jittery electronic loops of opener “Blubberplanet 1” vary in density while they warp and waver as it edges ever closer. It sounds as though it is in a vacuum, with the loops sucking the atmosphere from around us as we explore some distant world, but its evolution is subtle and the word is actually pastoral without us immediately realising.
The elements of percussion act as dominoes triggering other improv efforts that take amorphous shape around us; but as things progress, so their jazzier side is released with “F# Politics”‘s cotton wool drums and seductive bass charming the listener into highly repetitive, soft pedal post-rock. I was reminded a little of the first Tortoise album, just because of that willingness to pair structure with sheer abstraction. The glittering fragments that sparkle over the bedrock of cassette side one closer “Stalagmit” are like nuggets of found reality attempting to overwhelm the progressive rhythm, and the whole side feels like a world of possibilities. The juxtaposition of martial drumming, the glugging bass and swirls of electronic texture on “Nebula” is joyful, and when joined by the sweet sax does bring to mind some of the novel directions in which modern jazz is traveling at the moment. They share space with the likes of the Portico Quartet here, always progressing but moving slightly out of phase, just as a listener test.Dave’s brisk drumming and snare touches are a delight. In fact, he is a pretty impressive percussionist in general, with the beatless atmospheric textures of closer “Blubberplanet II” which takes its namesake and pushes it out of our atmosphere and into more abstract reaches, the sax all Sun Ra drift and dreamy breaths. It is a great ending to an exciting, accomplished and adventurous album, and the cassette looks lovely too.
-Mr Olivetti-
