Before this release, Broken Chip had managed to keep a low profile, playing only the odd gig over the last couple of years. If you’ve kept up with his Myspace profile, however, you’ve heard an ever shifting collection of works in progress. This release, as part of Feral Media’s wonderfully eclectic POWWOW series, finally sees producer Martyn Palmer’s work available for general consumption and it’s a perfect summation of what he’s done thus far.
The mini-album works as an extended 30 minute lullaby. It’s mood, like the Broken Chip demos of the last few years, is ever calm and ever warm. Yes, there are plenty of glitches, living up to his name, but they are never the driving factor. That place is taken by simple melodicism and spaciousness. Take ‘Nothing To See Here’, whose reverberating piano figures are reminiscent of Danny Elfman at his Tim Burton soundtracking best, but with stuttering machinery seeping through every now and then keeping it distanced from Hollywood. ‘Chasing Circles’ starts and ends with hints of birdsong and maybe the din of either distant traffic or running water – presumably recorded around Palmer’s abode in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. This is undercut by processed voices babbling incoherently, adding a dark texture to what might otherwise have veered toward new age-ism. This is probably the disc’s defining feature. While many textures are fairly standard synth and processing for IDM styles, Palmer never allows things to drift, and undercuts any potential saccharin episodes with attention to detail in processing contrasts, or through unadulterated melancholy, such as in ‘Piano Haze’. ‘Argo Boys’ finishes the disc with its most aggressively glitched up sounds, yet this is all relative and the stutters are rhythmically uniform and soothing, inviting rather than aggressive.
Broken Chip’s first venture into hard copy releases is calming and consistent. He creates gentle, yet intricately considered contrasts to ward off stasis. But, most potently, he understands how to create yearning beauty and is unashamed in placing this front and centre.
Adrian Elmer
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