It’s been a long time between albums for Feral Media boss Danny Jumpertz. In the 6 odd years since Overdub, Jumpertz has, with his wife (and drummer on a number of these tracks), Caroline, had a son and moved the family from Sydney to New York as a result of the Green Card Lottery. Inside The Sky is not an album that happened in any quick space of time in that period. It’s creation spans the entire time. Which means there really aren’t any fly-by-night moments, nothing that curtails to mere fashion or trends. Any such creative shortcuts and the datedness would be all too apparent. Rather, the long gestation has given the album a much more timeless quality.
The main reference points for Inside The Sky would be laptop glitch and expansive indie-pop. Every track teems with beautifully recorded (though not in any bland sense) guitars – acoustic, electric and bass – and live drums which are then chopped up, looped, glitched around and spat out in constantly shifting instrumental tracks. The little electronic pops, fizzes, stumbles and repeats often act as lead instruments rather than background texture, especially in a track like ‘Atomiser’ whose simple synth and bass guitar riffs provide a framework for the real action of stray field recording snatches, and minute electronic detritus. The real feat is that, while such high importance is placed on processing and tiny details, it’s never at the sacrifice of melodicism. And while ‘To See One’s Self From Above’ and ‘First Night In Space’ are the only tracks with any real vocals (and these are fairly ethereal and abstract), a sense of melody pervades the entire album. The structures of the tracks move forward in song-style arrangements rather than riff on repetitive technical ideas. In fact, for much of the album, I found myself imagining the voice of Damon Albarn to be just around the corner at every moment. Ultimately, the closest comparison I could venture for Inside The Sky is that it sounds quite like an instrumental Gorillaz album. There is the same sense of structure, æsthetic, playfulness with regular sounds and the same gentle nods to dub underneath the forward thinking digital production.
Inside The Sky is a great album. It is like no other of which I can think. It is purely instrumental, but is produced and structured like an album of pop songs. Yet the absence of vocals does not leave the music empty. The minute electronics perhaps take up the focus that vocals might in traditional pop and so carry an equal weight with the rest of the instrumentation, rather than being background – special fx sprinkling – as one might normally expect in music which blends acoustic, electric and electronic sources. The mastery of digital processing on the album is a wonder, where others might load in a preset or two and revel in the random effect produced, Alpen truly plays his fx units as musical instruments. Jumpertz and his list of collaborators have created an album of quite timeless depth, texture, melody and beauty.
Adrian Elmer
