Saturday, September 12, 2015

Plaid (Andy Turner and Ed Handley) - P-Brane E.P. - Warp Records 2002

Plaid is the London-based British electronic music duo Andy Turner and Ed Handley, one of my favorite electronic acts of all time. By turns warm and awash with beauty, alien, angular, sweet and oft chopped up, their style is almost instantly identifiable, but never predictable. They have been pioneers of analog (and more recently also digital) experimentation, writing music together for 20+ years. Prior to that, around 1989, they were two of the four founding members of "The Black Dog", an experimental group that defied classification really, although if I had to try I'd say they had elements of techno, dark ambient, field recording, as well as breakbeat (which has a similar drum pattern not unlike early hip-hop, however the bpm are higher). 

The booklet-free P-Brane cd.
Plaid (as well as artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher etc.) is often referred to as "IDM" ("intelligent dance music"), an electronica sub-genre that without a doubt wins the award for the most ridiculously pretentious name. Most artists, Plaid included, do not embrace the term. Here is what Andy Turner & Ed Handley aka Plaid said in an interview for Neon Nettle about it:

NN: Plaid, like other Warp artists are lumped under the category of Intelligent Dance Music-what does IDM mean to you?

EH: It means it's superior to all other dance music.

AT: Yes, it means it's the best.

EH: You can't make IDM unless you have a post doctorate qualification.

AT: And you need minimum a PHD to appreciate it. Which means our fan base is small. But loyal.

EH: Yes, "IDM" is a terrible name.



Plaid

"IDM" is meant to describe an experimental type of "dance" music that is often rhythmically challenging (or for the uninitiated, possibly baffling), and often includes elements of post-techno/ambient/glitch/breakbeat/drum&bass/experimental/jungle/avant-garde AND....so on. It can be danceable to varying degrees, yet it is equally or perhaps more suited to "headphone" or "armchair" listening (personally I go with the latter when I listen to most electronic music-my same mode of listening to and experiencing classical music).

Because I own the vinyl too (I have two technics 1210's but haven't had time to spin records in years)

The two tracks of note (for me they are nothing short of beautiful) here is the opener "Coat" and then the third piece "Stills"

"Coat" (track 1) begins with a (brief) but strong sense of melancholia, slowly moving like grey clouds. The clouds are broken up suddenly by a heavy bassline and drum breaks, followed by lingering piano chords buried deep under the weighted drum break. The splintered sounds of voices emerge, sounding as if they are coming out of a high-pitched, glitchy voicemail recording. Swathes of opulent strings glide in, "sounding" (to me) like witnessing the most ethereal sunrise imaginable (this section gives me chills every time). The distorted voices (around 3:21) come to the fore and the heavenly "string" like music returns now in descending and ascending keys bringing us to the close. I only wish this track was twice as long!

"Stills" (track 3) is more complex and opens with an electrified beat that is layered over an exuberant ambient background; suddenly, the drums silence themselves as gorgeous harp-like arpeggios begin to blossom, opening like flowers during a meteor shower . The drums kick back in, however now with considerably higher beats-per-minute, and a fragmented, irregular time signature that brings a kinetic energy and a "mildly" manic, driving percussion that dances, at it's own break-neck pace-with the heavenly arpeggios until it all comes to something of an abrupt ending. Lovely!!

"Diddymousedid" and "Mfaus" are just okay-I will typically play the whole EP without skipping them, however most of their pieces are more interesting in general (and they have put out over 12 full albums and many other releases over the years). The two tracks that I am "pushing" ;) on you, dear visitors-are worth the price of admission no matter what the cost! 

Love it or hate it, I would really be interested in reading your thoughts on this post. The more the merrier..

Enjoy I hope!

Plaid_P-Brane_EP-Tzadik.zip

http://www45.zippyshare.com/v/C7N0oUlv/file.html

14 comments:

Johannes R. Becher said...

IMHO the main problem with the term IDM lies in the fact that it's usually applied to music which is neither 'intelligent' nor meant to be danced.

Greetings!

Mark said...

The appropriate "IDM" album for this blog would be Venetian Snares Rossz Csillag Alatt Született, where he deconstructs late twentieth century Hungarian classical works.

Tzadik said...

Johannes.... ouch! ;) There are many fine examples out there I assure you, and "artificial intelligence" so to speak in music can work splendidly-the source still remains the human, truly composers, as I am not speaking of "chance" composition or random c.g. tones. I'm imagining that you'd warm up to music that is more electro-acoustic; Plaid does incorporate 'real' instruments in some of their work-in fact they have been working (or finished, I'm out of the loop) on an album with a Balinese Orchestra, I assume it's mostly gamelan. Then again, this has been done before, but when the alchemy works the results imho can be magic.

Regards,

TZ

Johannes R. Becher said...

Hi Tzadik,

I was not thinking of Plaid but of the typical, overvalued Warp stuff ;)

As for the "serious" electronic music, well... take for instance Xenakis. Who could possibly wish to hear La legende d'Eer, either from start or by fragments? It does not even qualify as "ambient". It comes to me that only those with a deep knowledge on both music and mathematics could derive some pleasure from it, or better said, from the understanding of how it is conceived and built rather than from the actual sound.


Regards

Tzadik said...

Mark!! Funny you should mention that VSnares album; I have been wrestling whether or not to post it here since I started this blog. Rossz Csillag is still, I believe, his finest achievement-it's one of my favorite albums of all time, and is unquestionably a towering and seminal work in electronic music.

Aaron Funk's music is generally referred to as 'breakcore' (plenty of amen breaks but at hellish speeds are featured by most 'breakcore' artists..it's almost a prerequisite), and yes there are plenty of so-called idm touches, especially glitch and the sophisticated patterns one finds in Autechre for example. His early works had a much 'purer' idm feel, however always rougher, darker and thornier than most electronic musicians..not to mention an underlying aggression bordering on anger. His interest in early rave, gabber and hardcore is what is reflected much of the time in his early works, as well as jungle and drum & bass, which in particular he still incorporates, pushing to the absolute limits. He has f*cked with jungle and torn it to magnificent shreds on more recent albums (My So-called Life, Detrimentalist, and so on).

On Rossz Csillag Alatt Született Snares uses brief sections from two of Bartok's string quartets on two tracks, and the only other Hungarian work is the 1933 ballad "Szomorú Vasárnap" (Gloomy Sunday) by Reszo Seress, which is here titled "Öngyilkos Vasárnap" (track no. 3). -That he uses the actual Billie Holiday recording of this 'suicide song' is brilliant, and as you undoubtedly know he pulls it off 100%.

The other most notable sample(s) imo is to be found on "Szamár Madár", where Snares uses the main theme from Elgar's Cello Concerto amidst the manic broken beats-it's gorgeous and brilliant stuff. As is the whole album!!

Best,

TZ

Tzadik said...

Johannes I do get what you are saying. Warp records is one of the most important, arguably the most important electronic music labels of all time-at least within the context of early seminal techno and other influential early electronic music (ambient techno, house music w. techno elements, the so-called 'bleep' music-some of my favorite actually-and indeed-"artificial intelligence" which was also actually the title of the groundbreaking compilation they released in 1992, which covered everything from techno to ambient and everything in between).

Warp for me is not what it used to be, but that's inevitable I suppose...either way it was nothing short of pioneering and remains legendary. They have gone on to release decent films (Warpfilms) actually, of the more esoteric type-just what I love. I can write all day about the early electronic scene but that's for another blog I suppose!

I do agree about Xenakis. Then again there are works by Stockhausen that I love, and others that I don't play at all. As far as *really* understanding music as math as-I confess I have no interest in becoming a numbers theorist so as to get a bit more enjoyment from a handful of pieces ;)

Then again, when we listen to (JS) Bach, or study his scores-we can see nothing but numbers, patterns- music as intricately built architecture-one of the greatest examples is 'The Art of Fugue', it practically is numbers theory as sound!

Best,

TZ

Scraps said...

Funny, I was going to mention Autechre (in the "sorta kinda sounds like"), but you beat me to it. And when I say sorta kinda sounds like Autechre, that means a kinda sorta goodness.

Scraps said...

(Oh and yes, IDM is an awful genre label. Nobody likes it. Back in a generation or three, I frowned at the genre label "Progressive", also. Somehow, some musicians (and lots of fans) embrace the that label. I guess that label is, what, more subtle? I mean, what is the opposite of Progressive? Unsophisticated?)

(Dum de dum dum dum. Cheers!)

Mark said...

Tzadik- shana tova, thanks for all your great posts which have greatly enriched my life, I think you can certainly post that album, would REALLY love if you could also find the recent Gamelan Pacifica recording of the Harrison works, with the great Jessika Kenney doing A Soedjatmoko Set.

Mark said...

also, check out Igorrr, a french IDM producer who does extreme things to baroque and classical samples (such as his baroquecore EP).

Tzadik said...

Hey Scraps. So you like Aurechre then. I have been a fan since their earliest releases. Such mysterious and oft complicated music-the textures and drum patterns are bananas : ) On many releases anyhow. If you fancy this type of electronic music I can make you a long list of artists to check out !

TZ

Tzadik said...

Ha, progressive...agreed! With electronic it gets ridiculous and downright dumb: how about: emocore, math core, splittercore, nerdcore (?) zombiebreaks..... yep..and so on. Not surprisingly it's typically the worst lind of 'laptop' music, made quickly with nothing but (pretty bad) apps.

'Chiptune' I don't mind (name and the "music").

TZ

Tzadik said...

Mark La Shana Tova to you too :)

Thank you for your kind words, I'm happy that you have found much here to enjoy, it makes it worth it to me to take the time on the blog. The Harrison..well I might already have it, depending on how "new" it is (last couple years). I will check.

I like Igorrr, got into him back in around 2006 or 2007, when i heard an unreleased ep on the oh-so-ironically title "ihatebreakcore" site; been following his tunes ever since. Ever hear of Abelcain? He remains obscure and seems to like it that way. Among other things he put out "Harpsicorpse", which is a suite for electric harpsichord. Really dark music, all of his stuff.

Regards,

TZ

Kaarsten said...

Thank you for this introduction! I think its really gorgeous melodies here