Plaid
"Spokes"
Warp Records
It's hard to review a release from England's Warp Records, having been a forerunner in many of the important electronic music movements of the past decade and a half or so. Since its foundation in 1989, Warp has consistently put out material whose artiness is often outweighed by its playfulness and vice versa.
The multi-textural layers spun out by the myriad talent have influenced the face of music itself, and electronic musicianship in particular. Any modern day electronic artists who has not been influenced by at least one Warp Record is suspect, and this critic suggests a universal boycott on said "artists" until they better acquaint themselves with the progenitors of their own namesake.
Not nearly the least of these talents is the team of Ed Handley and Andy Turner who, along with M.I.A. Warphead Ken Downie, formed Black Dog Productions in the late 1980s. When Handley and Turner decided to pardon themselves from their groundbreaking ambient dance work with Downie, they renamed themselves Plaid and put out a string of stellar material, most amply collected on their double album, "Trainer."
Having acquired the blessing of Trent Reznor's Nothing Records as a U.S. distributor, Plaid received considerable attention for their deserving late 1990s work.
"Spokes" does not function as the next logical step in the string of brilliant releases, but that does not mean that it does not contain its own strokes of genius. The problem seems to lie in the fact that "Spokes" does not seem to be stepping (or bicycling) anywhere. It basically assumes some of the territory that has already been stepped (but not overstepped) in, from Handley and Turner's Black Dog days to their most recent "Double Figure" album.
Is it right to chastise a group for sticking to a formula that works, especially when it can really work in such monumental strides as the dark symphonies that Plaid compose? Not every album has to expand the genre, per se. Yet at the same time, it seems that if bands like the multitudes in the Warp milieu were putting out albums sounding like "Trainer" all the time, it might make "Trainer" seem a little less special.
That's not to say "Spokes" will soil your old Plaid albums with more-of-the-sameness. Fans will be emerging themselves in the phantasmagoric, organic Orbital-y closer "Quick Emix" on headphones for as long as mandated by the timeless track. The hyperphonic low-end sprawl of "Crumax Rins" provides a similar transcendent experience with synthesized sounds that sound somehow more distant and more primitive than the guitars and bells they are trying to emulate. The drones of amorphous soundscapes brewing in the backdrop of the track may take several months of delicate, intimate listening to unravel completely. None of this is particularly newsworthy for those familiar with the duo's perfectionist knack for intricate processing.
What it really comes down to is whether one would choose to review a Warp record for those in the know or whether one should assume that the listener is approaching a product for which they are unaware of the persistent quality control behind its elaborate history.
For those in the know, "Spokes" is the next project from Plaid. As always, it is a fascinating work of careful and intentional design, but it is unremarkable in the larger context of a band who could not sneeze in the midst of recording a track without considering the depth that some flange and EQ on that sneeze might bring to the holistic picture of that particular track.
It doesn't matter what I say, though, because you will want to buy the album for the good stuff anyway; despite the good-to-bad ratio, Plaid's good stuff is always that good.
For those not in the know, "Spokes" is sonic genius from our knob-twiddling boys, but as a primer it may not be the best example of what they are capable of. Those looking for a "special" album may want to look toward "Rest Proof Clockwork" or "Trainer" instead.
However, "Spokes" should certainly wow those not in the know (or those who think that Aphex Twin came out of a vacuum). "Upona" is a more tense piece whose electrobass gets so tangled sometimes that, like something off of Autechre's "LP5," the beat seems to have trouble keeping up with it. Unlike their scrambled signal worshipping peers in Autechre, though, Plaid have a delectable ear for haunting melody that saves the track from the throes of glitch-level obscurity inside an album that froths with hot spots of shimmer and beauty.
They also do not obsess themselves in spacey ambient harmonics enough to doom themselves into a frenetic mid-90s Orb imitator resurgence. For all their electronics, the textures that Plaid elicit on "Spokes" fall far out of the wired plain of modernity's tech-obsessed gadgetry. One of the biggest criticisms of the duo is their inability to let go of their steel drums, but even pondering music like the kind on "Spokes" with any number of cheesy drum machine presets sets a curdling feeling in one's stomach.
On a fidgety song like "Zeal," they come off like a cleaner, symphonic Einsturzende Neubauten. The only thing is that the raw materials Neubauten may have used for their track have not been invented yet.
Composition-wise, the godfathers of musique concrete and mainstream mainstays alike should be able to examine a track like the hopelessly pretty "B Born Droid" with the same awe and splendor that a first-time listener would. In the sphere of dance music, it rises from a whisper to showers of light onto a thousand twinkle-eyed kids on mood enhancing drugs. As a work of art, the track stands as a densely-layered, deliciously produced, well thought-out, and sparkling pinnacle of creative expression, which, for Plaid, is nothing out of the ordinary at all.
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