With an extensive background spent playing “conventional’ instruments such as piano and guitar in various bands, San Francisco-based electronic producer Tim Arndt attracted considerable critical acclaim for his 2006 debut album as Near The Parenthesis Go Out And See on Canadian imprint Music Made By People, which showed him focussing on purely instrumental compositions equally evocative of both downbeat IDM and shoegazer slow-core rock. Given the delicate and deeply emotional nature of Arndt’s music as Near The Parenthesis, it’s certainly no surprise to see him smoothly slotting in amongst the n5MD label’s established gentle aesthetic for this second album Of Soft Construction. Opening track “It’s Not Even Midnight’ provides a good taste of the sorts of delicate and melancholic moods that predominate throughout the eleven tracks collected here, with its glacially wistful opening synth pads giving way to a slow, blurred-out wash of programmed drums and subtly-placed, ebbing guitar elements; indeed, so smooth is the fusion of instrumental and synthetic elements that it calls to mind the post-rock sphere as equally as anything tagged “IDM.’
“Mare Nostrum’ meanwhile sees elegantly stark piano notes take centre stage as flickering programmed rhythms trace a path over the reverb-drenched harmonics, with the addition of feathery guitar textures and reversed / looped samples contributing a vaguely psychedelic vibe that’s nicely capped off by the sampled background chatter that flits through the mix. “The Language Explosion’ sees the highly-detailed synthetic elements moving closer to the forefront as crackling textures and shimmering piano tones take proceedings out into one of this album’s more decidedly IDM-centred inclusions, in an offering that calls to mind Boards Of Canada and Bola’s crystalline melancholia, before “Open Sources’ gets deeper and darker, placing brooding bass pads beneath its ticking clockwork rhythms and feathery, harp-like treated guitars. Depending on your own personal leanings, the fact that Arndt pretty much restricts himself to the same sorts of melancholic themes throughout Of Soft Construction’ 56 minutes can be alternately viewed as thematic cohesion or lack of variation; either way, fans of his preceding Go Out And See album should be delighted with this follow-up.
Chris Downton
