Rival Consoles — Articulation

ElectronicMinimal
Written By Akhil Srivatsan
 
rca
 

Articulation isn’t the greatest album of minimal electronic music ever made. That would be Immunity by Jon Hopkins. It also isn’t the first to deal in the formula of thump thump thump thump kick and bass, unobtrusive snares and claps, and rollercoaster synths that create a specific closed-room atmosphere perfectly suited for midnight parties for one.

In fact, so much of the minimal techno / minimal house / minimal electronic subgenre of electronic music does a great job of creating exactly that sort of vibe. Armchair, headbob, toetap, lemony beverage, one person daydreaming. Refer to my comments on Immunity; this feature of its music manages to convert even an early morning run on just another manic monday into a contemplative, meditative, in-the-here-and-now sort of experience. It’s one of the biggest features of this kind of music, and while Articulation doesn’t do this perfectly, it comes close enough.

At this point, it’s important to note that ‘minimal’ would perhaps be an approximate but unfair adjective to attach to Rival Consoles in general, and to this album in particular. The synths bob and weave with so much intricacy that while a track may seem devoid of maximalistic pomp, there’d still be plenty of layers to unpackage over each listen. This is particularly true of the title track, and the album opener, Vibrations On A String. Both of these tracks are deceptively complicated, containing multitudes both in terms both of sonic and compositional choices.

These compositional choices -- Rival Consoles’ arrangements are particularly fresh – are a consequence of an idiosyncratic method of composition he used for this album, involving pen and paper and graphical representations of different sections of each track. Critics have alleged that these methods have robbed the music of its emotion, but I absolutely haven’t found that. The album is heady, not brainy. There’s plenty of emotional quality to the music; no concern there whatsoever.

All in all, it’s not a perfect album, but a good one. And that, to me, is a good thing.

The Music Box
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Pinegrove – Pinegrove on Audiotree Live

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Basement – Colourmeinkindness
Basement – Colourmeinkindness

I don’t believe I’m in a position to share any facts about the band Basement except that, in the 2010s, they played lightly distorted mildly noisy alternative rock. And that in 2012, they recorded an album called Colourmeinkindness, which has a sound that serves as a great backing track for the part of one’s life that’s punctuated by deeply introspective walks in the blistering heat.

12 RODS – My Year (This Is Going To Be)
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Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster
Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster

The hypermodel before me sticks her arm out a couple feet to take what must be an immaculately captured self-portrait that’d put Van Gogh’s to shame. In doing so, she reveals her pronounced wristbones, bony arms, pale and sunken pits, textbook indicators of poor nourishment.

Nouvelle Vague – Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague – Nouvelle Vague

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Radiohead – The Bends
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Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)
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The thing nobody seems to ask about the boy who cried wolf is why Bubby would do such a thing. What would prompt an otherwise standard-issue ten-year-old – likely even-tempered and straight-laced – to, on seemingly unconnected days, run through his village screaming about a wolf he’s seen? Aesop blames it on boredom and naughtiness but eventually faults the kid.

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Of course it isn’t fair that if you were to split the world’s population in two halves, you would find 4 billion people, on the one hand, who give more than they’re given in return, and 4 billion, on the other, who are given more than they give. Of course it isn’t fair that there’s no real reason for this except the inherent unfairness of the world, what it means to be.

Akhil Srivatsan
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