Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Steve Gilmore Reviews: Onemob - Seat Shaker

Download The Track Here

You may recognise the name if you are a) familiar with SC forum mods or b) into electronica and/or experimental where he also operates under the name And-Y (which is how I've always reviewed him in the past. This time, it looks as if he wants me to work for my no money because there are more riddles here than a season of the X Files. First off even though he is a mod on Soundclick he doesn't seem to have a page on this site any more - under any of his names. Secondly, best not go looking for material on the link I have given above because it just leads to his not very enlightening Directsoundradio page. You can get this particular track from the direct download link above but be warned, it's a gigantic 16 minute track weighing in at around 23MB.

Holy hernia, indeed....

Moreover, it is essentially a 'live' track although I have no idea what exactly 'live' means in this context, so expect a bit of oddity in the arrangement. I presume that what Onemob is doing is working with something like Ableton and mixing and matching beats and loops (and whatever else happens along) 'on the fly' which is - by extension - kinda live. The problem being, of course, that performing something live often leads to a 'wtf' scenario developing along the way. Especially if it really is done without any prior working out of what goes exactly where, and I hate to write that because Onemob has supplied me with some aural beauties along the way but I found this more of an (if you will forgive the hackneyed phrase) 'exercise in sound' than anything more substantial. All well and good if you are the musician and audience totally lost in the experience live but not much good on the couch at midnight with your headphones on.

It especially falls apart IMHO in the later sections when world instruments make an appearance (including a couple of phrases I definitely recognise), the instruments - to my ears - ran counter to what had been happening before and just sounded plain wrong. Now maybe that's just me being overly protective of my own little aural space, but that is what I thought while listening to this (a bit more than once or twice too). I can see this doing well in a club live environment though, the combination of beats and weirdities make it interesting enough to occupy your mind while your feet did all the work. The drop in pressure around 5:50 though is extremely noticeable (and I think would be on the dancefloor too) and that is where the world instrument loops make their appearance - highlighting HOW different this section is, A great idea IF it had gelled but to my ears this doesn't. Big ups to the man for trying something like this, but it's just disjointed and unfinished for me, and at 16 minutes it's a HUGE amount to chew on.

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