fatandconfused

Our Brother The Native – Tooth & Claw (FatCat)

Textile Ranch/ Charles Atlas -  (Static Caravan)

French Teen Idol – Enlightened False Consciousness (Lost Children Net Label)

Three seriously beautiful releases, elegantly textured tapestries of organic prettiness.

Much like by the limitations restricted, the fewer materials on offer, a vegetarian chef tends to conjure up far more interesting dishes than a traditional chef as he utilizes, improvises and gives new meaning and uses to familiar staples in search of something that will both interest and excite the taste buds of the partaker so Our Brother The Native take the hard route to making music. Imagine pre-electricity electronica, like Four Tet with his laptop taken away, simply left with the sounds that surround him from day to day, kindly captured in a box or in the case of Our Brother The Native perhaps a treasure trove would be more appropriate.

These are songs made from a bundle of sounds, birds singing, water running, hands clapping, pans clashing and a collection of samples, mostly of children’s voices used to a similar fine effect as the Boards of Canada, Isan and The Books. On top of this is a brand of peculiar Cocorosie-esque high pitched vocals, and perhaps along with Animal Collective, Cocorosie are as close a comparison as you will find whilst not wishing to take any credit away from what are a seriously unique and creative band, but for music critic/ pigeon-holing’s sake lets just say that if The Books remixed Cocorosie we may end up with something similar and I’m sure if you have any taste in music you’ll realise that that’s far from a bad thing.

Falconiformes, Tilia Petiolaris (the most straight forward, song based song on the album, a beautiful finger picked twin vocaled affair) and particularly the seven minutes of discontent samples set against at times operatic vocals of Octopodidae standout, though if you are looking for a challenging yet rewarding listen there is little that you will be disappointed with here.

I’ve said it time and again but am yet again here reassured that to quite a large extent you can indeed if not judge a book by its cover certainly you can a CD by its. One look at the excellent artwork that accompanies the Textile Ranch and Charles Atlas split and you know already that the CD contained within is likely to contain something rather special and indeed it doesn’t disappoint.

There is something magical about the cover, two girls on swings mid air, one coming up the other going back down against a 1970’s backdrop in some Austrian or Hungarian town that evokes memories of the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales, the state of innocence and total naivety to the horrible things that go on around us and the responsibilities that come with growing up.

Textile Ranch themselves have a magical sound, like Colleen had she been more mischievous, had her twinkling fairy dust tunes had a more urgent feel about them, had they been laced in mischief rather than melancholy, set to charity shop drum machines, flickering in the light like the facets of a diamond, recalling also the magic of State River Widening and many of the early Static Caravan releases like Fortdax and Little Robot Voice. The four tracks here come highly recommended and remind me of why Static Caravan has received so much praise over the years.

Charles Atlas follows a similar route but takes the long and winding roads, the country roads where it doesn’t matter if you want to take your time, if you wish to pull in from time to time to take in the green fields with their solitary trees and endless acres. At times it treads the same water as some of the more glacial post rock out there, pianos, heavily delayed guitars and electronic drums gently compliment each other in a lovely wash of  esoteric sound.

You may be aware of the Lost Children Net Label, a glorious accumulation of free downloads mainly in the form of post rock or at least “instrumental”, instrumental as in the way Sigur Ros qualify as instrumental even though most their songs contain singing. It’s somehow linked to the Silent Ballet website and forum and a blessing beyond anything your preconceived ideas of free music are.

The latest of such free downloads is French Teen Idols Enlightened False Consciousness a lovely album that is as much electronica as it is post rock, full of samples, doomy and apocalyptic yet hope crammed keys and some lovely skittering beats. Disaster samples conversations from flight United 93, respectfully so, and where some people may feel that the very idea of this is wrong I’d have to strongly disagree. Music is a form of art, and an expression of peoples feelings and emotions and I can’t possibly think of a more emotionally charged situation, the result is spectacular.

Compromise Your (He)art is graced with playground chatter and a closing speech from an Indian philosopher that brings to mind the well selected samples of the much underrated The Books. The Fleeting Beauty of a Butterfly is true to its name in its poetic beauty, all slow waves of synthesis and French spoken word samples.

For the majority of the time the album possesses the same unblemished and natural beauty that Johann Johannsson’s IBM Users Manual album displayed so well, the oneness with nature, the slow motion look at a world that holds so much splendour beneath the things that are so often forced to our attention, the bad things that fill the pages of the newspaper, the natural wonder of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, tracks such as Memento convey such wonder, much how Johann does but perhaps with more of a proclivity for drums and beats.

This is a truly wondrous album and as its free you really have no excuse not to go and download it immediately.
www.myspace.com/ourbrotherthenative
www.myspace.com/fatcatrecords
www.staticcaravan.org/
www.piano-magic.co.uk/textile_ranch/
www.myspace.com/charlesatlasnyc
www.myspace.com/frenchteenidol
www.archive.org/details/LostChildren023
www.frenchteenidol.com/fti.html