Reviews

There was a time –not a long time ago, actually– that experimental music and pop music did not share the same listeners at all, until Bjork managed to gather them together under the same roof. On the other hand, the Icelandic artist is just the tip of an iceberg, even though she's the only one who got on top of the MTV charts and paved the way for a lot of other musicians (people like Oval, Christian Fennesz and American acts like The Books.), exposing a lot of people/listeners to electronic music. Maybe the only real challenge actually consists of crafting special products that could be pleasant enough: this, in musical terms, stands for the ability to compose new melodies and songs. If, on one hand, the term ‘experimental’ reminds us of the linguistic freedom of the avant garde and implies something unpleasant about its connotations, on the other hand the term ‘pop’ should be assumed in terms of what had already been noticed by Andy Wharol: we live in an industrial society, a mass culture, imbued with artificiality where images and sounds travel at the speed of light. Well, we can't ignore this. And what are electronic sounds as ‘the glitch’ ? Mistakes, slags, found/random sounds. The laptop, in the smart hands of the Italian act tu m' can be considered as a true instrument, capable of ‘playing’ and processing either digital noises or acoustic instruments. ‘Nine Songs’, the title of the new CD R of tu m' (released by the Portuguese record label Grain Of Sound) already gives the main imprinting to the whole body of work: nine songs, to be precise, and a quite accomplished attempt to make songs with synthetic micro-noises or with sounds generated by instruments played by themselves (guitar, bass...), everything processed via computer. Patterns of sounds that follow each other to suggest possible melodic developments, drifting around, caressing the hearing and painting new acoustic landscapes. Tu m' open themselves, (if compared to the first album, that was more focused on rhythm and some kind of abstract conceptualism) to the recent developments of the so-called glitch-pop; the whole things sounds even more intriguing considering tu'm are improvisers. The whole album was recorded straight-away, with no post-production, so that means in a different way from the old method of conceiving improvisation in order to be channeled into more friendly and appealing forms. We could almost draw a parallel line in terms of evolution between the neo-conceptual art and the first generation of the electronic music scene of the nineties. Both, after having been invested with media democracy (video cameras, computer, digital cameras) and investigated in all of their expressive possibilities, have felt the urgency –towards the end of the last decade– to get some feelings back, going through a sort of ‘emotional process’. This is something that happens in a magical way in the artistic and musical production of tu m' (I refer to both music and videos): they are not only among the most promising sound artists of the Italian scene but they're even great at giving ‘a face’ to their music. — Marco Altavilla, NY Arts magazine

Egyvágtában rögzített lemez, utómunkálatok nélkül. Egyensúlyozás valahol az ambient, click'n'cuts és melodikus popularitás határmezsgyéjén, persze mindez az improvizáció felügyelete alatt, s anélkül, hogy ezek bármelyikének letisztult formája önállóan, pusztán csak magamutogatóan megszólalna. A ‘dalok’ mindenesetre cseppet sem mézes-mázasak, nem uralja oket a sokszor zavaró, unalomig fokozott klikkelés, s még véletlenül sem fekszenek föl a hosszan kitartott hangok ragacsos varázsszonyegére. Épp csak annyit tesznek, hogy a figyelmünket fenntartsák, hogy egy darab végére, akár azt is el lehessen feledni, mibol is keletkeztek. Minden, ami szól laptoppal feldolgozott. S ha csak arra gondolunk, hogy egy mérolemez sípolástól milyen rövid is az út egy teljes valójában meg nem mutatott kompozícióig, akkor máris megérte. Újabb arcok, akik a glitch-pop világában (is) keresik a boldogulást – azonban azokkal ellentétben, kiknél már-már stílussá, kikerülhetetlen védjeggyé érett a hangfeldolgozás és zenekomponálás e kétségtelenül jópofa vállfaja, addig a tu m' ízig-vérig meg tud maradni a maga improvizációs technikája mellett úgy, hogy közben végeredményként mégis valami popos attitud szüremlik le. Az ember még azt is képes lenne belehallucinálni e történésekbe, hogy mindez gyógyító ereju (ha más nem hát a felismerések sorozata). Néha pont a mechanikus utcai zenék, a verkli szimfóniák reverz világa, repetitív bája az, amit e lemez áraszt magából. (Istenem, csak ez az egy az egyben R.D.J. ‘Selected Ambient Works II’–ére emlékezteto motívum ne lenne itt a 6. trackben.). — Farkas Zsolt Géza, Ultrasound

Restiamo in argomento CD-R con quella che sembra essere l'etichetta guida nel settore: la portoghese Grain Of Sound. La sua produzione è talmente ben curata da lasciar prevedere enormi salti di qualità nell'utilizzo di questo tipo di supporto – la prima volta che mi sono trovato in mano i dischi dell'etichetta ho fatto addirittura fatica a capire se si trattava di CD-R o di normali compact prodotti su scala industriale!!! Tra le nuove delizie della Grain Of Sound è compreso il rientro in scena dei tu m' di Città Sant'Angelo (Pescara). Non lasciatevi ingannare dal titolo che questi improvvisatori di razza hanno dato alla loro nuova fatica: in ‘Nine Songs’ di canzoni tradizionalmente intese non c'è ombra, si tratta infatti di brani esclusivamente strumentali, anche se non è detto che in futuro i tu m' non possano approdare a quel tipo di standard. Resta il 9: bozzetti fluidi dalla travolgente e selvaggia tensione ritmica che sa in fine trasformarsi in tensione melodica, bozzetti che fanno pensare ad una versione mediterranea – e quindi meno glaciale – dei Supersilent. Con ‘9 Songs’ i tu m' dimostrano di non essere estranei a nulla di quanto è avvenuto alla musica elettronica: dalla ripetitività del minimalismo a quella della techno, dai guasti del glitch a quelli della musica da classifica. E' come se Aphex Twin fosse salito in un treno con i Pan Sonic e, insieme, avessero deliberato di deragliarlo. Ma, vista la smisurata creatività e la frenesia che li contraddistingue, forse sono solo dei novelli Robert Johnson: miscredenti che hanno venduto l'anima al diavolo. 8 — Etero Genio, Blow Up