Fabio Orsi

Audio For Lovers is a profoundly emotive double album. It sings with a pristine clarity, the musical medium transmitting feeling and atmosphere with a distilled purity. This is music straight from the heart, and indeed at times the album transcends all artistic form and becomes like a direct and untranslated expressive transmission. The first disc presents a slew of tracks, each a vignette of a particular mode of love in its polymorphic pathos. Curiously, every track is 1:40, 6:24 or 8:00 long, and the symmetries this produces are marvellous, ranging from short auditory haikus to more verdant and luxurious sound paintings. The music is dominated by slowly-unfolding synths, pads, organs, drones and the like; Orsi deploys deep banks and drifts of sound. Curiously, the effect is not so much to evoke atmosphere or a sense of horizon as such arrangements often do; rather the music plugs straight into the brain so that an emotional kinaesthesia is induced. Interwoven with the keys are some of the most subtle and delicately played pianos, guitars and basses I think I have every heard. Orsi relies heavily on repetition to draw the moment into maximal fullness and his subtle compositions draw us into different moods and atmospheres with grace. The theme might be love, but Orsi conveys great depth and, stained with the salt of suffering, the music never teeters into sentimentality or schmaltz. He weaves complex affective tapestries, knitting together different feelings with attentive and gentle brilliance. There is a profound joy running through this disc, but it is tempered by shadow and the result is unalloyed emotional apotheosis. Disc two presents only four tracks, though their combined duration is still about an hour. This disc is more heavily synth driven and ambient; while disc one generally maintains slow tempos and minimal structures, disc two really opens out and is perhaps a little less disciplined in this respect. The track titles are perfect illustrations of the experiences of the songs; “2 or 3 Moments in 1 Day”, for example, truly instils one’s spirit with the pensive existential weather of being human and alive. That said I did prefer disc one; I feel that thematically it is a little more coherent and compositionally the additional discipline enables it to pack more into less. Honestly, though, if this album only comprised disc two I would still really like, even if the deeper magic is on disc one.

Fabio Orsi - Audio For Lovers

Label: Last Visible Dog
Catalog#: LVD128-129
Country: US
Released: Sep 2008
Genre: Electronic, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Abstract, Drone, Experimental, Minimal, Ambient

Enjoy!

Disc One

01 Yesterday Love
02 Rising Love
03 Secret Love
04 Pure Love
05 Lost Love
06 Young Love
07 Tender Love
08 Last Love
09 Shining Love
10 Tomorrow Love

Disc Two

01 2or 3 Moments in 1 Day
02 The Psychedelic Power Of Bubbles (You And Me)
03 Before Long, Before Anyone, The Stars Will Be Walls In My Mind
04 Last Dream Lost Carefully

Apjiw

Electro/ambient is a pretty vague description of what an artist may sound like. One who embodies this term could possibly be an offshoot of Board of Canada's pioneering IDM meets ethereal ambience style, or perhaps a more subtle reincarnation akin to Stars of the Lid's hypnotizing aural submersion. Still not on the mark? How about some of Hammock's gloriously melodic concoction or Sigur Ros' angelic panacea? Or maybe something along the lines of God is an Astronauts shimmering rock styled ambience, or Lights out Asia's emotive post-rock rendition? Truth be told, Chamberland does a pretty good job at working his way through all of these over the course of Think Over. The ground he covers is impressive, to say the least, and it certainly demonstrates that he has a fine understanding of the forces he's working with and makes a strong argument of their mastery as well.

Think Over comes bundled with a nice little conceptual theme that ties the tracks together, which is most noticeably expressed in the voice overs. If you haven't figured it out by the last track, it should become blatantly obvious, and the realization is nothing that is all too shocking for an ambient experience. Through this vehicle Apjiw gets a lot of mileage out of his diverse influences, and the variety of the album is one of its strong points. Tracks flow from one an excellent ambient synth or drone into a heavy programmed beat or piano line without blinking an eye. Apjiw makes it all look so easy, it's a wonder why we see so many disastrous electronic albums released every year. Chamberland's past experience clearly is an asset to Think Over; even though there's such a plethora of ideas and exchanges occurring on a track by track basis, he maintains the cinematic air throughout, which wraps the listener in a warm, envigorating cocoon. "Fun" also permeates through the album, with some use of musical boxes and other toys for musical effect. While some have over exploited this novelty, Chamberland is sure to balance this component with the rest of the layers; balanace is one of the key themes of the album, after all. And whether it be the strong melodies, the caustic ambience, or the glitchy beats, Think Over keeps the pace moving quickly and doesn't let our attention stray too far from home. Primarily upbeat and sometimes downright groovy, the audience should be grinning from ear to ear while eating up Apjiw's every last note. Some criticism must be made towards the album's length, which is not justified by the content provided here. True, Chamberland is wonderful at his craft, but there's not a lot of substance in the tiny three to four minutes tracks, which sometimes sound like fragments than full fledged compositions themselves.

One explanation might be that the album resembles that of a score for a film, which he is understandably accustomed to, but musical albums are a much different matter. The last third of the disc simply regurgitates ideas and sequences that we've already experienced during the first forty minutes, and I do believe cutting a good twenty minutes from the album would greatly benefit Think Over's overall effect. As is, it's overlong and drags towards the end. Criticisms aside, Think Over is an enjoyable album which should fit nicely in the collections of many electro and ambient enthusiasts. If Chamberland continues work on this project, I forsee great things in the future, though some distinction must be made from his day job in order to maximize results.

Label: 9.12
Country: Canada
Genre: Folk
Style: Experimental, Ambient

Apjiw - Think Over (September, 2007)

1. Is that all you want from me
2. Living in a box
3. PPP
4. The man who talks to birds
5. YYY
6. Prism Flame
7. 15
8. Tears
9. 1 sec left
10. Angel Sleep
11. Make a wish
12. Ouverture
13. 2 sec left (remix)
14. Think over
15. Amniotic (remix)
16. 3 sec left (remix)

Apjiw - Things (April, 2009)

1. Things
2. Anilu
3. Maat
4. Fly With Me
5. Continuous Present
6. 134
7. Tears for Us
8. the Shared Fate
9. Breach
10. Human Rights
11. Just a New Day
12. Printemps
13. the Magic Circle

Bibio

Take the layered, unhurried folk exuberance of a Bibio album, replace the source material with something that brings to mind calliopes and cymbalophones, cast it in sepia tone, run it through organ grinder speakers and you’ve got the limited edition EP, Ovals And Emeralds. Marrying musical sincerity with electronic jousting Bibio constructs a sweetly disorienting wall of whirs and electronic moans to create a soundtrack well suited for a gauzy aquarium carnival. Released exclusively on emerald green vinyl, the album packaging is appropriate to its beautiful yet disorienting feel. Dark at times, Ovals and Emeralds is still Bibio, rollicking and full of musical motion. For all your killer-clown-goes-electro-folk kicks, kids, step right up.

Bibio - Ovals & Emeralds

Label: Mush
Catalog#: MH-042
Country: US
Released: 03 Mar 2009
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Folk, Experimental, Ambient

Enjoy

Tracklisting:

1 Oval Emerald Vertigo (5:54)
2 The Death Of A Trapeze Artist (2:15)
3 Carosello Ellitico (4:17)
4 Six String Marenghi (1:45)
5 Polycoulrophon (7:35)
6 Segee And The Indian (3:59)