|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
review by Dene Bebbington When listening to Saul Stokes's music, I sometimes think this is what music written by aliens would sound like because his sonic palette, and the way he uses it, is unique and often quite strange. Radiate continues this tradition from the musician who is also known for building his own synthesisers. Spanning nearly seventy minutes, it's made up of five tracks taken from a live performance at San Francisco in September 2003 (though you wouldn't realise this due to the lack of audience noises) and two studio tracks recorded since the album Fields. This kind of hard ambient music feels very abstract, a little indulgent (particularly on the live tracks), and also alien with some of the bleepy or squawky sounds - the first track, "Radiate", could suggest the image of walking through a jungle on a alien world due to the background sounds like rain and otherworldly creatures. Saul is also rather clever in his sonic creations and typically shuns the need for more orthodox structures and sounds; indeed, the listener notices that rhythms develop where one wouldn't expect -- a good example of this is from the fuzzy static sounds on "Wave Image Wave" -- and sometimes melodies briefly appear out of the organised chaos of sound. In contrast, the two studio tracks, "Curve of Symphony" and "Vast", are the least quirky ones on the album; to my ear they seem more structured and less improvisational than the live pieces. None of the seven tracks generated strong mental images for me. Instead, their attraction is the abstractness and clever use of peculiar sounds; it's one of those albums with lots of subtleties where the listener can come back to it several times and say to himself "Hmm, I didn't notice that before". To this end, I suspect that a good pair of headphones would help one get the most out of it. Saul Stokes's music can take some getting used to since it can sound rather weird at first, however, if one perseveres, then a fairly rich, albeit unusual, listening experience is the reward. Though Radiate is not likely to be an oft played album in my house, I can appreciate what it has to offer. |
|
