Like its packaging Object is a minimal austere work. It may have begun with organ or other instrumental or percussive instruments yet it has been processed to the point where it all sounds like one amorphus soup. Not that soup is a bad thing, as this kind of soup draws on the overtly electronic process orientated approach of Oval yet combines it with that nostalgic whimsical feeling that the Boards of Canada seem to conjure up so effortlessly. It’s the work of the freakishly prolific Queensland based sound artist and Room40 honcho Lawrence English, and there are some similarities in mood with his recent for varying degrees of winter (Baskaru) from a few months back. However Object is much more overtly computer music, due in the main to the timbre of the sounds. These pieces have a peculiar futuristic yet dated feel, in that five or six years ago this kind of gentle amorphic beatless electronica felt like the future, yet with the death of the clicks and cuts posse it all seems to have melted away. Perhaps this may account for the melancholy, the nostalgia that English imbues these tunes with. It’s warm, repetitive, with a crisp sound of digitalia, like something has been processed through a comb filter. Sounds bubble, percolate and loop, warm drones rumble, high pitches come in and out and the pieces build in density without necessarily betraying their overt structure. The music just seems to slowly happen to you, subtly taking form outside of consciousness. It’s all quite low key, yet that is precisely its charm, that and the nostalgia for a future that never was.
Bob Baker Fish
