Buzzin Electronic Music

Mountains – Choral – album review

Mountains

There are certain CDs that you can mark down as having utterly changed your perspective on music. Four Tet’s 2003 album Rounds did this for me. Here, a new type of music invaded my limited rock consciousness. It was electronic, but not impenetrable for the unaccustomed ear; the tracks didn’t have a conventional structure, yet were clearly defined; it was new, yet somehow it was familiar.

And, though sonically different , the same principles are  used on Mountains’ gorgeous six-track album Choral that made Four Tet so appealing: Both find harmony in a dissonant world; there is an absence – or backgrounding – of humans through alternative sound constellations; and the idea arises that you are listening to some constant hum of the earth from below the surface – with humankind a muffled, trivial presence.

On Mountains’ Choral you are offered further to this the suspension of time (not literally, of course, that wouldn’t work, think of the consequences). Any musicians that can use one chord for eleven minutes and thirty-nine seconds (on the opener ‘Choral’), only alerting you to the fact with the casual decision to give an arresting entry to a guitar a minute before the track finishes, are pretty special, partly just for attempting it.

The word ‘drone’ comes up a lot with regards to Mountains, and on ‘Telescope’ it is clear why that’s the case – a white-noise fog descends slowly over the indifferent guitar, finally enveloping it entirely. Mountains use long, drawn out chords that slowly evolve in texture and tone while other audible samples suck in and out like waves.

But this isn’t drone in the dull, monotonous, Antiques Roadshow interviewees sense: it remains fascinating throughout, and really doesn’t really merit such a deprecating title – on ‘Add Infinity’, where the time signature-less notes play and rise and swell, there’s no hint of that kind of drone, as is equally the case on ‘Melodica’ which has one of the most beautiful openings (if I can allow myself such pretension) I’ve ever heard.

Mountains are old school friends Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp. The two both ended up at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and started producing music together due to mutual artistic and musical interests. Choral is a combination of their previous work mainly recorded live with electronics, instruments and field recordings, such as them flipping through the pages of a book (‘Map Table’).

Choral is out now on Thrill Jockey. This is Mountains’ MySpace page, which features ‘Map Table’ from Choral on it.