(All Saints Records)
All Saints Records spent the nineties
curating and gathering together lost and new ambient releases.
Picking up out of print records that weren't getting the treatment
the deserved out of obscurity and shedding light onto music that
roughly falls under the ambient genre. The label had some trouble
later on when it found itself owned by a major label unwilling to
invest in it but All Saints has emerged once more, teaming up with
one of the defining electronic labels Warp records.
This new compilation Greater Lengths
seems to be a victory lap for the label following a series of
reissues of long out of print records from the likes of Brian Eno,
Harold Budd and Laraaji. The label has been a place for interesting
experimental and ambient music with a well defined but wide-reaching
aesthetic. This collection of tracks from the labels' back catalogue
sets out to cover a variety of sounds in an attempt to sum up that
aesthetic.
It's not all a continuation of Music
for Airports though, Jon Hassel creates strange, almost
mechanical jazz funk with his track Streetfaxx. Harold Budd's
understated creations show how to create a lot with very little.
Piano and acoustic guitar wash up against each other falling in and
out of place on Afar. Else were Armenian folk artist Djivan Gasparyan
creates a slow-burning and mournful atmosphere on Tonight whilst
Roger Eno's contribution that opens the album, Amukidi, sound like a
slowed down African vocal chant.
The label
also seem to serve as a home for musicians wanting to attempt
something a little different from their best know output with music
from Led Zepplin bassist John Paul Jones, Velvet Underground member
John Cale and Cluster and Harmonia's Hans-Joachim Roedelius'
classical compositions. Brian Eno ambient work seems like a big
touchstone for a lot of the artists on the label but his output here
seems more concerned with more contemporary sounds, tapping into
electronic trends with the digitised voices and drum machines on What
Actually Happened?.
The second part of Greater Lengths
is a remix album, as up and coming left-field musicians are given the
chance to update and re-imagine decades old music of All Saints back
catalogue. It's a more interesting prospect than most remix albums,
as the old guard give up their creations to those that they may well
have inspired as the contemporary artists assert a place for this
music today. Gathering a variety of interesting underground artists
Sun Araw, Ela Orleans and Odd Nosdam. All working in different genres
they seem to have one thread in common, a focus on texture rather
than melody.
Ambient synthesizer artist Motion
Sickness of Time Travel breaks up and weaves Laraaji's Space Choir
into something other the acoustic instruments of the original are
hard to spot but the spectral, meditative remains. Bandshell
transforms Jon Hassel's music into a distorted alien rhythm pulsating
like tribal dance from some strange future while Ela Orleans keeps
the positivity of Laraaji's Kalimba adds her own driven beat and
layered vocals.
Personable transforms Harold Budd's
imposing synthscape work-out Dark Star into a dreamy, wide-eyed and
sprawling ambient techno cut whilst rising producer patten twists
another Harold Budd track Mandan into something that bares almost no
resemblance to the original as loops sound like their folding in on
each other over a barely together beat with an effect that is wild
and heady.
For those interested in exploring
ambient music past Brian Eno's Ambient series then Greater Lengths
could serve as a good introduction to dig further into a back
catalogues of a host of important acts. The remixes are what I've
found to be the most interesting part of the compilation. It does a
great job of bringing together some of the best artists working on
the fringes of electronica and in doing so not only highlights the
past for contemporary experimental music but it's future as well.
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