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review by Bill Binkelman Heading in the (more or less) opposite direction from his previous recording, Wide View (a masterpiece of starkly beautiful melancholic ambient soundscapes), Jeff Greinke has infused his latest album with kinetic rhythms that combine electronica, glitch, and even world fusion beats alongside accessible, but still ambient, melodies. The music is sometimes quirkily playful, sometimes eerily pretty, and other times dark and sinister. The result is one of the most delightfully idiosyncratic releases of 2003. Here is an album that I fell in love with by the second track during my initial playing. There is an abundance of compositional originality on this CD as well as some truly amazing studio engineering. I can't tell what half of the sound sources are, but you can be assured they're a combination of keyboard, percussion, samples, guitars, and probably a lot more. Some of the beats are organic, while others are overtly synthetic (hence my referring to this as glitch/electronica). What elevates weather from another planet above so many other albums, though, is how Greinke approaches it as a jigsaw puzzle, i.e. the assembled puzzle (the CD) "feels" like a whole and conveys a sense of completeness, but each "piece" (track) stands apart from the others and introduces its own motif and themes to the entire picture. So, you veer from the future funkiness of "sunday afternoon" with lounge-type vibes, samba-like beats, weird vocoder effects, echoed bell-tones, muted trumpet, and distorted guitar, to "climb" and its muted glitch/dance beats (sounding a bit like subdued Crown Invisible) underneath foreboding washes of synths, to "dark glass" and its subtle but snaky world fusion textures (north African desert perhaps, or maybe a hint of East Indian to my ears) via its exotic rhythms and sampled wind instruments that evoke a meeting of Al Gromer Khan and Richard Bone, to "krakatoa" and its outright Gamelan-fusion music which carries a brooding sense of mystery through the main melody played on a lower register sampled horn of some sort as well as a somberness imparted by a series of church-like bells in the background. There are quasi-whimsical numbers here too (whimsy in a Tim Burton vein, that is), like "rolling square" with arrhythmic beats played on an odd assortment of percussive devices bouncing off minimal piano notes and more serene sampled horns. "little dust devils" is appropriately named because one can almost imagine those tiny specks of particle matter coming alive on the floor of one's living room and doing a weird dance to the slow tempo beats and the various guitar textures and permutations. If you're looking for something closer to the spaciousness of Wide View's "One September," "Glide," or even that album's title track, well, you will be sorely disappointed in weather from another planet. However, if you're like me, you'll find yourself instantly enthralled with these eleven short (nothing is over seven minutes long) bouncy beat-filled sonic trips into shadow and light. Fans of artists as diverse as the aforementioned Richard Bone, Crown Invisible (although this CD is nowhere near as frenetic), Cyber Zen Sound Engine, Tim Story (with beats, of course) as well as lovers of Greinke's more rhythmic work (e.g. In Another Place) should find this album nigh irresistible. I know I do. Just as Wide View was my favorite ambient release of 2002, weather from another planet is on the inside track to the same position for 2003. |
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