| Neotropic, for those not in the know, is the experimental ambient alter ego of Riz Maslen. While she has released music under her own name, as well as Small Fish With Spine, it is the Neotropic moniker that has become her most prolific outlet for delicately progressive electronic exploration. For all intents and purposes, Maslen has become the female equivalent of Brian Eno, an electronic surveyor who has managed to delve into the hidden nuances of the genre and as a result reshape it to her own needs. Beginning with her 1995 Neotropic album 15 Levels of Magnification, Maslen has almost single-handedly built upon the detached tone poem structure pioneered by Eno back in the late 70s, furthering the concepts of sampling and electronic minimalism in music and tailoring them to her own ends. Her masterful techniques in stripped down ambient texturing reached their peak on her 2001 effort La Prochaine Fois and have been improved upon to varying degrees with White Rabbits. The key factor to keep in mind when listening to Maslen's Neotropic projects is that this is immersive music, best experienced in a setting permitting tranquil attentiveness. This is not to say that the album doesn't work as background music, because it certainly does due to its predominantly downtempo structure, but it unfolds higher levels of crafty aural layers if experienced either on headphones or in a darkened, soundproof room. To say that Maslen revels in subtlety would be something of an understatement. With each successive Neotropic release she has followed in Eno's footsteps, trimming down her sound to the barest of sonic essentials. In the process she has managed to create entire realms of emotive soniference that effectively become musical dreamscapes and while not quite as minimal as Eno's latter day efforts, Maslen's retrained use of sound is still miles away from most of the electronic music on the horizon. As the title implies, the music on White Rabbits is both magical and elusive, presuming of course that the album's name refers to both the magician's pet and Carroll's time consumed mammal. Unlike a magician, however, Maslen more or less rolls up her sleeves, thus exposing her bag of audible tricks on the very first entry of the album. "Girls at the Seaside" is pretty literal in reference to the title, being a brief swirl of the sounds of feet walking on sand and the ebbing lull of the tide. That is blend perfectly into "New Cross" is no accident, as Maslen is nothing if not a purist and perfectionist when it comes to creating a completely engulfing aura. Resonating with gentle guitar, detached piano, and muted drums, it's a hauntingly beautiful expanse of electronic minimalism. The track stays on course, really only changing tempo with the addition of effervescent chimes, which lend an almost fairylike essence to the song. "Inch Inch" keeps the tempo down in the mid-to-low range, utilizing a militaristic drum rhythm rooted in shuffling snares while piano tinkles underneath. The gentle, almost new age jazz vibe of the song is interrupted, however, when back-masked samples are injected at the two-minute mark, whirring, whizzing, and careening with a 1984ish sense of ominous, yet detached, foreboding. While such a shift sounds drastic on paper, in actuality it's quite smooth, the transition coming abruptly but gently and expertly showcasing Maslen's sense of how divergent sounds can mesh well together. The track eventually devolves into nothing more than a static chirp (think electric cricket), then white noise (think digitized rain), before fading into the next song. With "Magpies" Maslen brings screeching bits of atonality to light, cymbals and violin colliding in gentle waves of dissonance. An almost subliminal bassline roots the piece in floating etherealism, as a haunting voice floats with aimless precision over the mixture, eventually evolving into an almost harrowing wail/chant just as a digitized tribalistic beat kicks in and boosts the BPMs a smidgen. The track continues to build, then slips into the ether, just as "Inch Inch" had done prior, ultimately concluding with the all-too-familiar aural motif of feet crunching into seaside sand banks. "Odity Round-a-Heights" is perhaps the most purely ambient composition on the album, consisting largely of intersecting tones that waver and flux over, under, and in-between one another in the musical equivalent of an Om-centered chant. A mock slice of symphonic cacophony signals the advent of "Feelin' Remote" which quickly drifts into ghost-like blues thanks to shadow spiked wafts of harmonica. Dusty samples of live piano and guitar have been snipped and looped so that they drift with aimless purpose amongst the delta harp, glockenspiel and earthy Rhodes synthesizer complimenting the earthy composition. As the diverse elements drift and wander, they gradually congeal into an amoeba like whole that pushes, pulls, and undulates with quiet precision. When a rubber band throb of bass kicks in, the track immediately changes tempo, becoming a mid range slab of nether worldly blues schism. At a mere 1:04, "Small Moves" is the shortest composition on the album (discounting the field recording atmosphere of the intro track, that is). Essentially an ambient bridge between songs, this number serves to segue the listener into "Joe Luke." Again Maslen's expert sense of minimalism comes into play as a loping bass pulse mixes with light piano, snares, and eventually a warm sounding faux organ. Like the previous songs on the album, it takes small, delicate bits from the various instruments and weaves them together to create a flowing tapestry of sound. For example, the guitar segments here are fuzzed to sound jagged, vocals are reduced to elongated chants of ahhhhhs and the middle section of the 12:24 entry is like a mutated prog rock-cum-freeform jazz improve, complete with flute and coolly warm ambient tone poems. The album concludes with the beguiling opus "If We Were Trees" the first song to include what can pass as actual vocals, at least in terms of a verse/chorus structure. Maslen's words seep out like a fractured fairy tale, cherubic whisper utterances that sound like a bed time story sung through a light mist. That nothing other than detached piano and strange moog sounds provide accompaniment, makes it all the more strange. It gets stranger, however, as the electronic burble and chirping invades the mix, then slide guitar that is twisted into wrangling flange, and finally the snare drums and cymbals over a gradually escalating low-end wurgle before climaxing with a somewhat anticlimactic thud. An extended portion of silence then ensues, then a scathing patch of synth cuts in, augmented by icy chants and frigidly swirling ambiance that picks up pace rather rapidly and becomes a space-rock interlude of anthemic proportions, the synth swelling over laser light beams and pounding drums. It's like an episodic theme segment from a lost version of Dr. Who. White Rabbits won't be for everybody, especially those who expect their electronic music to push them out onto the sweaty dancefloor at the local after hours meat market. But those looking for a veritable journey through the inner mind's sonic washboard will find this aural hole to be the gateway to infinitely pleasurable dreamscapes, unnerving sonic nightmares, and richly textured ambient tone sonatas. - IGN |
2XLP/Out Of Print