Matthew Robson is a composer, a former HOOD drummer, a SIERPINSKI band member and a generally all round nice guy. RANDOM NUMBER is his solo electronic music project and February 2006 brings him out into the world to play live sets alongside SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN and TRENCHER.
These small pointers suggest "Golden Acre Sleeps" is a CD album that should be getting the kind of wider notice given to FOUR TET'S "Rounds" album. By dint of RANDOM NUMBER'S peer respect and serious involvement, we do have to sit down and give this stuff a good listen. It seems too good, and too accessible to leave it to the inside pages of specilailst magazines like The Wire.
Fortunately, no hardship is involved. No knitting of the cognitive brow is needed. The percussive side of RANDOM NUMBER is precisely calibrated. Both simple and complex rhythmic patterns are close enough to natural dance rhythms to make the whole set head shakeable at the very least. On the thoughtful side, there's plenty of variation in the frequency, placing and timbre of the beats and it’s unusual for the same pattern to do that cartoon background thing of looping back round every few bars. (The Scooby Doo Syndrome)
Melodic, ambient and harmonic sounds come from warmer places, soothing the inclination towards abrasiveness in the percussion. Bass is used imaginatively and econmically. When the lower notes sound they tend to be large and a long way down. A bit tectonic, maybe. Their first appearance, in "Troubled Moves" at track one is with a dry sounding double-bass emulation, contrasting with characteristic snicks of very short high frequency clips and clicks. The sonic distance between the two is potentially alarming. But it is invigorating and it does hold away the narcoleptic, trance-like state that electronic sounds can evoke.
It probably sounds pretentious to say so, but with hints in the titles and your strong visualising tendency fully wired up, there does seem to be something lyrical about the unfolding of the album. Maybe "Golden Acre Sleeps" is not quite a Concept or Themed album. But there is a steady underlying melancholy and a resignation about the cruellest aspects of urbanisation. It’s there. We can’t undo it. But we can find spaces and we can be creative and reach other people and other places.
|
"Golden Acre Sleeps" (the penultimate track) has a feeling of English rural landscape reconciled with the nearby city, offering some kind of refuge for the troubled soul. The real Golden Acre Park is a green area near to the grime of Leeds. It's a popular day out with woods, fields, ducks, planted areas and a programme of music concerts in the Summer. Beyond it lie Wharfedale, the Moors and (eventually) The Cumberland Fells. The train could take you there, via Skipton and over the Ribblehead Viaduct. RANDOM NUMBER'S CD could do a parallel kind of transport. Travelling out, as you would, close to Leeds 6, you would also hear the many-cultured sounds of "Galleries" and marvel at the learned sonorities of "Non Port", with a section that could be the trumpet players warning up for a Copeland performance. It is very grand.
The short theme of "Golden Acre Sleeps " is a beautiful tune. After it, the monastic sounding "We'll Let The Idea Sleep, But We Won't Let It Die" lodges itself in the subconscious. And I have found, after a fortnight of returning to this album, that I really can’t do without it.
www.myspace.com/randomnumbermusic
|
