Avant Music News reviews “Lifenotes”
Review from Avant Music News of “Lifenotes” by Clem Leek:Clem Leek from Kent in the southeast of England is an ostensibly ambient composer who frankly invests too much emotion and melody in his music to be characterized as such. In less than two years since debuting as a recording artist, he has released an impressive amount of quality music and his international fan base is growing exponentially. “Lifenotes”, according to his own notes, is composed of pieces new and old, all close to his heart. So close that he plays it close to the vest by offering us mostly barest-bone sketches. Having persued rich and dense soundscapes in his previous work, “Lifenotes” is equivalent of back-to-basics folk – suggestions of suggestive moods in the spirit of Brian Eno´s very short pieces collected on the various “Music for Films” albums. The improvised piano sittings are intimate – you can hear his feet shift on the pedals – as are the solo electric guitar meditations. State of the art electronics are employed but leave little discernable trace. Opening appropriately with “Page One”, violinist Christoph Berg joins him to add a few deep strokes of the violin, but between that and his reappearance on “Closing (The End)”, the rest of the album is strictly a one-man show. Sixteen tracks scurry past in only thirty-five minutes. “My Little Boat” barely leaves the dock before it´s over. The rainfall almost drowning out “The Middle Part” is succeeded by an unseasonably warm “November 11th”, Remembrance Day, with a small choir of sparrows singing along with the piano and the drone which shadows it. Leek´s “Lifenotes” are as pastoral as a Wordsworth poem but then again, so really are many of fellow southeasterner Eno´s short pieces. Some of the more richly textuted pieces are vaunted and expansive, others are reticent and lo-fi. He is finding his own voice among similarly-inclined, conservatory-trained young composers like Nils Frahm, Dustin O´Halloran and Max Richter, all of whom make refined but accessible music. It´s too well-manicured for folk, but still has too much dirt under its fingernails to be chamber music for the salon. original review
Igloomag.com reviews “Skeleton Taxa” by Damian Valles
Musician, artist and greengrocer Damian Valles enjoyed a bumper year in 2011 (highlighted by the birth of a healthy baby boy). He released two mini-CDs, a full-length, and rounded off his stint as curator of the admirable “Rural Route” mini-CD series. Most of the entries in said series can be characterized as ambient, as can his three-inch releases. Old Tin Will Cry (Twisted Tree) is divided into two parts, the first of which, “Cold Working,” goes round and round in pleasant circles like a finger in the snow. The second, “Phase Transition,” lifts the gaze upward to take in the green metallic sheen of northern lights in dub, their echo thrown back by the pure white surface underfoot. The Waves That Destroy (Hibernate) is a single, twenty-minute piece, and it is the one that actually sounds like old tin crying, or at least having tears well up in its eyes in the bitter cold. Valles expands the drone to orchestral proportions, as his field recordings, small bells, piano and guitar are all swept up into a string section, with a violin swirling out of the mass to solo half-way through before receding. The entire piece is far from destructive, but is rich in drama. Skeleton Taxa is far from ambient, as it is too chock full of distractions to be undistracting—of hazy Byzantine ritual (“Ascent of the Past”), of lonesome nights hunkered down by the HAM radio in northern woods, of big-city minimalism (“Nightengale Floors”), attic-dusty country blues records, lavish quasi-exotica (“With a Lark’s Tongue End”), a dour, skirling dirge (“Elegant Skull”). It even features a song, “Bell and Arc,” sung by his wife Heidi Hazelton. With a voice sharing some of the lilt of Annie Haslam and with Valles’ lush arrangement, it calls to mind Renaissance, the British progressive rock band. It is an aural curiousity cabinet, the whole somehow greater than the sum of its parts (for there are a few pieces of fool’s gold among the gems). The ear enjoys wandering over it. original article
Leonard’s Lair reviews Matt Bartram’s “The Dreaming Invisible…….”
Once of Air Formation and The Static Silence, Bartram has offered more than a decade of good service to the shoegaze genre. For his latest album though, he has applied certain constraints. Firstly, there would be no vocals or drums and only one guitar would be used plus – in his words – “whatever effects I felt necessary”. Clearly, he felt effects were absolutely essential as ‘The Dreaming Invisible…….’ is absolutely covered in them.
‘Absent’ gets events underway with lush drones to the fore. The melody and pace changes little so the variations in key change offered by the relatively brief ‘Alight’ are welcome. ‘Cadence’ conjures up deep walls of gut-level despair which do battle with a hypnotic jangly loop. Meanwhile, a heady euphoria is reached on ‘Healing’ before the multi-layered tapestry finds a new focus (and even more layers) for the closing ‘Illuminate’; the effects seemingly giving voice to shards of ice for a full thirteen minutes.
This will be the definition of hell for the shoegaze haters buit for those who enjoy glacially shifting guitar effects accompanied by gradual mood changes, ‘The Dreaming Invisible…….’ delivers time and again. After all, without those effects, this wouldn’t be a Bartram album would it?
Further Listening:
Air Formation, Hammock, The Static Silence, Flying Saucer Attack
Igloomag.com chats with Clem Leek and reviews “Lifenotes”
“Lifenotes is a nice mixture of complex atmospheres and stripped back pieces. It has a long track list (sixteen), but they are all short tracks, easily digested.”
Clem Leek is a composer who has quietly been working away for some time now. He is very often described as neo-classical, which is a pretty loose term for modern music that is based on traditional classical constructs. Although it certainly draws influence from that genre, I would say it is a bit more soundscape oriented. Ambient washes of drones and electronica popping and fizzing while simple melodic motifs are used, often repetitively to add colour and definition to the pieces. Based in Bath, UK, I first came across Clem at a small gig in an underground venue in said town, and was pretty impressed. Not what I was expecting given the venue, it being more suited to a grimey punk band or or something, but the atmospheric and emotive music of his performance was engaging and interesting, if merely for its juxtaposition of content and context.
Since then, Clem has released several works, all steadily developing his style as a composer. This latest offering is another step on his journey. Lifenotes is a nice mixture of complex atmospheres and stripped back pieces. It has a long track list (sixteen), but they are all short tracks, easily digested. Centred on the piano, but also using many other real instruments such as violin and guitar, the album is very much played rather then produced for the main part.
The recording is pretty low tech it has to be said. I once read an article which argued that the recording process was as much a part of the finished product as the performance it captures, and the buzzing and clicking captured during that process is just important to the music as anything else, and should be celebrated as such. Well, you can certainly hear the recording process in all its glory on this album, which could be considered a celebration of the art, or could be seen as unnecessary hiss depending on where you stand on the argument. Either way, it’s a minor gripe, if that’s even what it is.
I managed to ask Clem a few questions about the album:
Gustave Savy / Igloo :: When and how did you first get in to music?
Clem Leek :: I have always had a passion for music for as long as I can remember. My parents exposed me to music at a young age and encouraged me with music lessons. I have been very lucky that I have been able to really explore music at each stage of my life.
Igloo :: What prompted you to start composing?
CL :: Well, as most musicians do, I used to write small melodies and improvise a bit, but it wasn’t until GCSE and the discovery of Sibelius (software not composer) that really got me thinking about the process and structure. Since then I have been exploring lots of genres, areas of notation and instrumentation. It is my favourite part of music, expression through composition is a huge part of my musical life.
Igloo :: What are you listening to at the moment? Not what influences you, but what do you actually get down to?
Clem Leek
CL :: Well I am listening to a tonne of stuff at the moment. I’m loving the new Com Truise album, along with Nils Frahm’s new CD and i’ve been getting down to 65daysofstatic as well.
Igloo :: Your album Lifenotes has pretty melancholy vibe in places, is that intentional, or did it just turn out like that?
CL :: I think a lot of my work, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally is melancholic. The context in which some of the songs were written definitely lead to that.
Igloo :: How was this recorded? At home or in a studio?
CL :: Some of it was recorded at home, some recorded out and about with my little travelling studio. It’s nice to be able to record something In the spur of the moment, little moments like that can really add to a piece. All the mastering was done in a studio though.
Igloo :: Did you have a definite concept for this release, or is it a coincidentally harmonious collection of disparate pieces?
CL :: The album is a collection of pieces written over the last two years, so really in its element it can’t help but be a disparate album. Although I like to think that adds something rather than detracts. Each piece really is a Lifenote and I really wanted them to be seen that way.
Igloo :: What’s your live set up? Is this stuff in your live repertoire and is playing live something you spend a lot of time working on? Translating recorded material to a performance context can be a technical conjuring trick.
CL :: Preparing live material is always a challenge. Most of the pieces from Lifenotes I will perform live. Some, just being piano pieces, remain like that for live performances. I like to adapt other pieces so that they are recognisable yet I re-imagine them for a live situation. My setup always changes. Sometimes I love to keep it simple and just use piano and other times I’ll have laptop, piano, guitar, violin and other instruments. It depends on the piece as to how long I spend on preparation, I always like to keep an element of improvisation in my sets, meaning I can work with timbre and structure. Using Ableton live allows me to be flexible live, it is a great platform to work from.
Lifenotes is the latest album from the multi-talented composer Clem Leek. It is available now on Drifting Falling.
Pop Matters offers up 2 cents on Damian Valles’ ‘Skeleton Taxa’
Valles has been jumping from one genre to another––math rock, post-rock, ambient, punk––for more than a decade now. The Canadian musician has landed on something that feels like ambient, but which he says is more concerned with structured tunes and melodies—song stuff—than his past solo stuff. How is it? At times reminiscent of the dark, spooky stuff put together by Norway’s Ulver, albeit without the overwhelmingly depressive edge, the record’s perfect in its ambient ambitions, and pretty good otherwise. “Bell and Arc”, which features vocals from Valles’ wife Heidi Hazelton, is inarguably the best here and makes you wish there were one or two more like it.
Exclaim.ca weighs in on Clem Leek’s “Lifenotes”
Compared to Max Richter, Dustin O’Halloran and others in the current school of neo-classical composition, Clem Leek is as much a miniaturist as a minimalist. The pieces on the UK artist’s second full-length have the fragmentary character of in-process sketches or thoughts. Piano chords are played tentatively, with pregnant intervals allowing for full breaths, or briefly flourish amidst rain and birdsongs before fading away ghost-like. The guitar pieces are a little more earthbound, but are still pensive and in the moment, like Leek is discovering the soundtrack to some real-time scene. The mood grows a little repetitive at the halfway mark of the 16 tracks and a greater intrusion of field recordings or some other complication (such as the drone and telegraph noise of “Origami Soldiers”) might have jarred the rising somnolence. The quality of play and conviction to keep thing micro rescue the album from also-ran status. Leek is one to keep an ear on.
Future Sequence reviews “Skeleton Taxa” by Damian Valles
Although his seventh release, Skeleton Taxa is Canadian experimental artist Damian Valles’ first full length CD ‘proper’. Having more recently been exploring ambient and drone aesthetics in a string of limited CDrs, digital releases and compilations (not to mention the first Rural Route edition which he curates) this album sees Valles retain these components, but also reprise the sound sources he established in early work ‘Count(r)ies’ (2009). Released on Under The Spire, the album charted the artists’ migration from big city to small town in Ontario, and the resulting experiences of the quieter lifestyle. Two years later, Skeleton Taxa feels like a culmination of Valles’ sonic experiments, achieving something quite special.
Taxa is the plural of ‘taxon’ which is defined as a group of organisms. ‘Skeleton Taxa’ then, in this context is a number of groups of skeletons. The amorphous skeleton is at our physical core; without the differentiating elements such as skin, hair, eye colour, facial structure that make up our unique identities. Whilst it’s not made explicit, Valles could well be concerning himself with the subject of death and what lies after it, certainly it is our bones that last beyond our conscious/waking life. A potentially morbid topic, but is of course perpetually captivating by its very definition.
There is structure to these pieces that approaches ‘song’ patterns. Even with the wider range of instrumentation – be that piano, guitar, synthesiser, drone or recording – Valles establishes a collage effect, stitched together with an embedded unrest but consistency of style. So rich is the soundscape that its difficult to paraphrase the work by any genre, each track reveals new treasures; juxtaposition of electronic tones against piano or guitar, worn drones contrasted with clatterings of objects in a room or as in ‘Bell and Arc’ the voice of the artists’ wife Heidi.
‘Collapse Process’ features a piano that sounds like it may be pinned, the reverberations from the instrument allowing extended life through effects so that the notes build into a droning back drop like vapourous ghosts. The post-mortem recording over ‘Calavera’ (Spanish for ‘skull’) has an antique air to it, a lurching menacing melody keeps a funeral bell march rhythm, Valles adds atonal violin and more and more sounds like an investigation of all parts of the body.
With a dynamic tonal and textural range Valles shows here that he is a master of his art, creating an ever shifting, ever unpredictable journey. ‘Skeleton Taxa’ is a beautifully rendered work defying categorisation, encapsulating the exploration of sound and challenging our notion of humanity within its duration.
Although his seventh release, Skeleton Taxa is Canadian experimental artist Damian Valles’ first full length CD ‘proper’. Having more recently been exploring ambient and drone aesthetics in a string of limited CDrs, digital releases and compilations (not to mention the first Rural Route edition which he curates) this album sees Valles retain these components, but also reprise the sound sources he established in early work ‘Count(r)ies’ (2009). Released on Under The Spire, the album charted the artists’ migration from big city to small town in Ontario, and the resulting experiences of the quieter lifestyle. Two years later, Skeleton Taxa feels like a culmination of Valles’ sonic experiments, achieving something quite special.
Taxa is the plural of ‘taxon’ which is defined as a group of organisms. ‘Skeleton Taxa’ then, in this context is a number of groups of skeletons. The amorphous skeleton is at our physical core; without the differentiating elements such as skin, hair, eye colour, facial structure that make up our unique identities. Whilst it’s not made explicit, Valles could well be concerning himself with the subject of death and what lies after it, certainly it is our bones that last beyond our conscious/waking life. A potentially morbid topic, but is of course perpetually captivating by its very definition.
There is structure to these pieces that approaches ‘song’ patterns. Even with the wider range of instrumentation – be that piano, guitar, synthesiser, drone or recording – Valles establishes a collage effect, stitched together with an embedded unrest but consistency of style. So rich is the soundscape that its difficult to paraphrase the work by any genre, each track reveals new treasures; juxtaposition of electronic tones against piano or guitar, worn drones contrasted with clatterings of objects in a room or as in ‘Bell and Arc’ the voice of the artists’ wife Heidi.
‘Collapse Process’ features a piano that sounds like it may be pinned, the reverberations from the instrument allowing extended life through effects so that the notes build into a droning back drop like vapourous ghosts. The post-mortem recording over ‘Calavera’ (Spanish for ‘skull’) has an antique air to it, a lurching menacing melody keeps a funeral bell march rhythm, Valles adds atonal violin and more and more sounds like an investigation of all parts of the body.
With a dynamic tonal and textural range Valles shows here that he is a master of his art, creating an ever shifting, ever unpredictable journey. ‘Skeleton Taxa’ is a beautifully rendered work defying categorisation, encapsulating the exploration of sound and challenging our notion of humanity within its duration.