1981. Audacious Art Experiment.
15th October 2013.

Reviewer – Rowan Blair Colver.

This review was originally published in Now Then Magazine issue 68

Having never set foot in the AAE before, I was a little confused when I walked past this odd looking workshop style building with a few blokes standing outside. Not knowing this was it, I continued up Harwood Street until I heard the sound of frantic punk drumming from the only illuminated building on the short road. I made a quick u-turn and invited myself in. Inside it was like a cross between a hippy squat and a music studio.

Members of Martha were chilling on a second hand sofa, eating plates of grub while a Super Nintendo played demos of Street Fighter II on a tiny colour cathode TV. It wasn’t long before I had a go. I was a bit chilly, and there was no bar or any sort of public service look to the place. It was just a matter of being there really. I’d recommend bringing friends when going.

The first band on, Brainfreeze, were awesome. A group of blokes in black making loud Pantera-style groovy, angry, thrashy punk dominated the building for 20 minutes. Although their lyrics were gruff and almost indiscernible from howling, I did notice quite a few poignant and political lines in there. Good stuff if you ask me.

Martha, a young group of talented musicians, were next up. I’d heard good things about them and many of the people in the building had come specifically to see them. Their high-pitched, harmonic singing was what got me. The whole thing reminded me of Punky Bruster, an album by Devin Townsend. All members had a go at adding their voice, and they did it well, drummer included. He was a very talented drummer, who I found out later prefers to play guitar. The two front men bounced guitar riffs around while the bassist kept hammering down the groove.

1981 arrived late after flying in directly from Finland. They’d been up all day and their faces showed it. Kudos for dedication – they played wonderfully and gave us an almost studio perfect rendition of their material. They were young, excited to be here and eager to give us their breed of polished and technical punk rock. They concluded their set with a great number and quickly put their things down and went off stage. The crowd demanded more, and after a short while, amidst complaints of being awake for 20 hours, they played one more. Very impressive.

I feel that YouTube is often under-rated as a source for decent new music. I often find new artists and sounds to enjoy while flicking through the recommended videos section. Say what you like about targeted advertising, but if you are honest and say what you like and are happy to say so, then why not experience the results of that input? I do.
A genre of music that I discovered this year is chillstep. You may groan and say it's been out for ages, but I really don't care for keeping up, I care for enjoying music. To discover something new that I like is a gift. I am grateful. For those who don't know, of which I am sure there are some somewhere, as far as I can tell, it is a neat little description to sum up music that sounds like dubstep but without the hardcore attitude that it often has.
The music however, cannot be described with such a description. I want to discus this mix today, a compilation of a few chillstep artists created by Ni:12.

We begin with a resonant female voice riding the beat of some lovely pads and sequenced melodies. She sings of her feeling of madness, "It's driving me crazy"... to the swelling and evolving electronic pulse that flows around her like a herd of sonic creatures, entwining in each other's paths.
A bouncing melodic dance plucking pop begins to drive the treble side and takes the feel of the music into the higher part of the head, before swooshing down into some piano and drum tranquility. An eastern sounding introspective tune brings us into some crashes like water falling onto us, and then like an unleashing of slow moving but powerful intentions, the beat picks up into something I'd describe as powerful.
As it regains its peace, the music takes a slightly epic turn as the piano melody incorporates darker deeper tones to the sound of a drawn out string. Then again the beat pulls in, joining the flow and the eastern humming string catches the top of the wave like a schooner bouncing into the musical horizon.
As the direction comes to a close and the next movement encounters our hearing, a flowing sway touches something deeper and more central within me, in my belly. The piano again, twinkles in like little lanterns while a guitar begins to rhythmically match the swish of the cymbals.
As I sit and describe what I'm hearing, this is my third listen today to this, I notice only ten minutes of the hour long video have passed.
I then hear a male voice, what he says, I cannot remember, I was thinking about the ten minutes but then the music changes gear. A woman begins to sing beautifully first, like the wind moving gently through large rain covered leaves, but then she begins to sing words. "Leave your world behind...".
The male voice speaks again, peaceful, warm and somehow mechanical. "Keep your labels for yourself" he says.
As he continues to utter his wisdom an arpeggiator begins to build the tension in the flow before it crashes into some electric guitar led awesomeness. The words "Remain as you are" accompanied by such a vast change in mood is at first ironic, but the video has not changed, the root of the source of the entertainment remains. I get it.
I'd love to describe the whole thing, but I want you to hear it for yourself. This, and many other videos like it, contains fantastic music. Explore it.

Ni:12 does specifically say without any doubt that the music does not belong to them and that if any artists featured are unhappy then the video will be removed. I respect that. My personal feelings are that videos like this only serve to benefit the artist as their sounds are given to wider audience. If you enjoy the songs, the music, then the chances are you will take note and look for it again.

Ni Twelve is on Facebook
And also on soundcloud

A special someone sent me a link to soundcloud today, it was for an album called Koy by Spirit Hood. I had never heard of them before but the name and the graphic image of a geometric pattern forming a circle enticed me in. I do appreciate new music and this one grabbed me first time around and said "yes please".
It begins with a voice, almost a hush but not quite and it echoes from the walls of my very head in a pulsing wash that seems to be perfect. As I am wooed and settled by this tidal vocal hypnosis, the music takes a turn downward into introspective keyboards and chimes. It is peaceful, like a lake of light, my being floats on the crest of a self creating soundwave.
Once we have been truly swept out into a cosmic abyss of imagined colour and audio internal-visuals we find ourselves surrounded by a subtle tribal beat. Wooden drumming sounds begin to pulse like the tapping of dripping water into a old oak barrel, and we begin to experience a shift in tone as the music picks up a more digital feel, clicks and beeps can be found hiding in the ambient natural sounds of swirls and of the ocean.
Some fragments of melody along with a swerve of mood bring about a new phase of movement. The rhythm picks up to a canter and some funky effects recreate the atmosphere of a distant sci-fi fantasy world. Bells and fuzzes combined with the abstract musings of a vocoder slowly bring us into an emotional string and electro section. The bubbling reality of the soundscape falls once more into the lap of a voice, a firm male, familiar somehow, speaks of truth before another spiritful melody joins in, making way for the new.
A short breakdown rolls in with a bassy flow that swells to include some higher pitches, playing in tranquil echoes of the rhythm. A distorted horn or trumpet rings in the next chapter of experience, which includes some choral voices, eastern sounding and surrounded my a mist of sensual visitation of symphony. A funky drum beat continues through, giving what would otherwise be a void of immense internal lostness, an anchor for grounding, a reminder that this is indeed a human encounter.
The album continues to flow from highs and lows, forming voids and creating peaks in places where music never usually treads. Silence is visited but with a soundtrack, the inner spectacle of the visual mind is revealed through sound with flush and frolic, sway and swoop.
I'd recommend visiting the soundcloud link, as I did, and if you're like me, eventually get the CD.