The long awaited Tim Exile lp is finally out, a joint release between Warp and Planet Mu. When possibly the two biggest labels in experimental electronic music join together to put something out, you know the combined hype machine will be out in full force. Let's be clear - I can see this landing in the playlists of every shoreditch twat. But does that necessarily mean it's shite?
A declared interest - I'm a bit of an Exile fanboy. I first came across him through his collaboration with John B "Broken Language", and soon after his first full-length on Mu - 2005's Pro Agonist - was a masterpiece of glitchy breakcore flavours, not only taking the Drum and Bass structure to the extremities (note "The Forever Endeavour and it's complete refusal to drop in any meaningful way) but playing with conventions of melody and beat structure to create truly unique forms. His live shows were, and still are, a masterpiece of live looping and fx, although to get as naked as he used to.
So releasing a vocal album, with a full lyrics sheet, is quite a departure. IDM is full of voices, but very few vocals. It's as if something as direct as a lyric would only serve to detract from the complexities of the music. I must admit to finding the performances of the new album material a somewhat mixed bag. The experimental nature was still there, and there were some great melodies, but it was hard to follow in places, especially when the PA was less than ideal. Add to that Tim's intesting vocal style (he was previously a chorister, and has kept the style, with no vibrato and strong held notes) and it was a lot to take in. It seemed that only a full listen to proper studio recordings was going to be enough judge the success of the work.
Opener "Don't Think We're One" starts with a delayed, percussive, rhodes-esque synth sound. The tone could be from one of his early jazzy releases on Moving Shadow, but the shifting nature of rhythm and the refusal to fit in a standard 4 bar pattern makes it hard to pin down, until a deep bass fills out the sound and a snapping, pulsing beat brings in the lyrics. Immediately one can hear the familiar blend of reversed hits, glitches, tape stops and other intricacies that mark the piece as an Exile composition. The lyric - an appeal to a partner not to place any hope in a relationship - combined with the synths and very British sounding vocals gives it a vague Depeche Mode feel, although the Basildon Boys were never quite so angular. Track two, lead single "Family Galaxy" continues to pervert rhythms, starting off with a steady triplet beat before gradually morphing into a stomper - Hard 4/4 kicks with a shuffling triplet over the top. An almost impenetrable middle section eventually gives way to an epic outro, pitched up vocals and signature changes all over the place.
Each track has examples of his previous styles - "Fortress" and "Bad Dust" both feature the deconstructed and corrupted vocal samples he's been using since "Merlin" and earlier [the latter having a Dilla-esque unquantised shuffle in 7/8. If you listen carefully, you can hear muso geeks in the background wanking themselves into a frenzy over the very thought.], while the two lyric-free tracks "There's Nothing Left of Me but Her and This" and "When Every Day's a Number" are, respectively, an eDit style glitch-house number and a Prog Drill'n'Bass workout much like "Forever Endeavour" which builds into a beat P. Yet there are enough new styles to see Tim is experimenting with more than just vocals. Album close "I Saw The Weak Hand Fall" is closer to DNTel in terms of melody, while "Pay Tomorrow",alternating bouncey techno-pop with dirty bass swells and choral roars, and a prescient lyric on the financial crisis, could easily be a cover of Sparks, or even Squeeze. There's even a pitched up, filtered backing vocal that sounds like the kids from "Another Brick In The Wall pt2", although I don't recall the Floyd ever rhyming "Food" with "Dude".
Overall, Tim seems to do a great job of combining recognisable vocals, front-centre in the mix, with his usual glitched up noises and poppy, if irregular, song structure. There seems to have been quite a promo push for this, as you can imagine with the combined might of Warp and Mu behind it. It's an undoubtedly strong album, and while i'd heard most of the songs live, i'm still finding new things after the 5th or 6th listen. While most of the tracks are probably still too bizarre for daytime radio play, anyone who can sit through an entire Bjork album should be able to get something from it.
There was a brief mention in a recent interview of Tim doing a cover of Jamie Lidell's "When I Come Back Around", and although it either wasn't finished or hasn't surfaced yet, the combination makes sense. If "Listening Tree" bring to mind any other act, it's Lidell's early work and his Christian Vogel collaboration Super_Collider. It also seems, after his recent Motown shift, that Lidell is returning to solo performance, presumably meaning more electronics. Seeing as they're both on Warp, surely someone has to arrange a collab/jam/tour/release between them?
Mal
Fortress
Family Galaxy
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