April 6, 2004 • BlueSanct
It's been forever since I first heard this album, back when I didn't know anything about the pretty expansive obscure-indie-folk scene, and I didn't like this album at all, probably just because I wasn't familiar with music like it. Hearing it again now is really interesting and I can definitely say that I like it more now than I did back then.
Forcefields and Constellations is a very inconsistent album, which makes it difficult to listen to. It more or less sounds like a various-artist compilation of several underground indie noise/folk/ambient artists, as that's the genre mix presented. Some tracks are quiet, buzzing noise, others are ethereal ambient pop, still others are sparse folk or musique concrète (heck, all of these show up in the first six tracks alone). Some vocals show up on three of the tracks, which are nice but also sound a little out-of-place.
However, I should point out that the group is an acoustic guitarist and cellist essentially doing electroacoustic experiments with their respective instruments, so the amount of variety they pull out is really impressive. This sort of music probably shouldn't be held to the same standard I generally hold music to, since having a consistent sound is clearly not what they were trying to do, and each individual track taken on its own is pretty good. Not necessarily fantastic, though; there isn't a whole lot that really stands out (perhaps "...With a Man I've Never Met", it has a nice melancholic atmosphere going on) but there's nothing too bad either.
On the whole, it's a good listen, although one with a pretty limited audience (I don't really know any electroacoustic-free folk fans) and that kind of falls outside of the scope of "traditional album" due to its experimental sound. There are a lot of good ideas here that could use some fleshing out, and given that Black Forest / Black Sea have put out a few more albums since this one I probably owe it to them to check out one or two.
you make me fell very uncultured and very un adventurous when it comes to musics.
ReplyDeleteit's okay; the more music I listen to the more uncultured I feel since I realize how much stuff is out there I'll probably never listen to
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