| Self-described “electronic based record label” Mush Records has been pulling off something of a coup as late, first spiriting Daedelus out from under the nose of Plug Research and getting him to commit to tape his best album yet (March 2005 release Exquisite Corpse), and now releasing this shimmering creation from former Chocolate Industries artist Caural. Subscribing less to the hip-hop aesthetic of his earlier days, the sound on Remembering Today is more a mélange of sticky beats and clangs, balmy hums, buzzes, and fragmentary melodic dialogues, all wrapped up in the warmth of a friendly personal interaction. With feet planted equally in the realms of IDM and abstract jazz, and fingers in the pies of hip-hop, world, and experimental musics, Caural treads with a lighter step than many of his producer peers. The result is an experience akin to having the artist speaking directly to you through the music, not in any pompous or didactic way, but as if each listener were on the same level as him. He just wants to have a normal conversation, tell you about what he loves, what his passions and projects are, who he’s been listening to. This kind of informality is seldom found in the works of “electronic” musicians, and might seem a bit of an impropriety to listeners accustomed to the more clinical moods of acts like Matmos, Aphex Twin, or Boards of Canada, all of whom are handy reference points for Remembering Today. Instead of coming directly at you with dry clicks and cuts, this record invites you to sit down and enjoy its forays into the eclectic contemporary music world. Opener, “I’m Way Too High,” belying its title, chaperones the listener through a tasting of the vintages that lie ahead, its scrambled keyboard loop providing continuity atop a mix of sounds before morphing into the orchestral-warm-up beginning of “Bleached Platinum.” This, in turn, gives way to the jazzy, stuttering meat of the song as naturally as leaves turning in fall. The song then breaks itself down, deconstructing its own elements, preparing the way for the next in a pattern that is to be repeated throughout Remembering Today. A pair of gurgling water-droplet, pizzicato string breaks in “Auto Rickshaw” anticipates the placid rise of “Lake.” The gentle knocks and swells of “Suicide” fade into the ethereal wisp of ambient tone that begins “Mouth,” before a haunting vocal line slides in, bringing with it a faint tambourine rhythm. The basic elements of the album, its beats, melodies, and moods, are stable only in the most transitory of ways, but their slipperiness is somehow necessary to the complexities underlying its organization. Remembering Today is assembled as a totality, with each step being a logical progression from the one before; the songs, for the most part, hold up on their own, but they gain an extra, and necessary, level of meaning within the context of the whole. Few artists even attempt this kind of organic coherence; Caural succeeds, marrying a level of intimacy on par with label-mate Daedelus to an ear for sustained development of which Nobekazu Takemura would be proud. After spending time with Remembering Today, it’s hard not to be eagerly anticipating the next project, already in the works, from Caural and Mush Records. - Urban Pollution |
1XLP/Out Of Print