Unsurprising that the three musicians featured on this release have created
an album with a startling range of styles considering their relatively disparate
backgrounds.
Aranos, a multi-instrumentalist from Bohemia in the former Czechoslovakia,
has been playing piano since he was 5 years old. As the son of an opera singer
he was weaned on classical, folklore and church music before discovering Louis
Armstrong.
Jon Mueller improvises with percussion and electronics and more commonly plays
drums with instrumental math-rock outfit, Pele, along with several other side-projects
such as Collections of Colonies of Bees.
Chris Rosenau, also from Pele and Collections Of Colonies of Bees, plays guitar,
banjo and various electronics. His engineering work in the US and Japan has earned
him a reputation for having an ability to get noises out of peoples heads and
onto tape.
The music produced by this trio is abstract yet easy, semi-industrial ambient
with touches of Autechre-like electronica and small elements of Baroque weirdness.
The different approaches complement each other beautifully - on "Now Sparkling
Ice" the noises of ripples in electronic puddles, solemn drone-vocals and
whetted violin phrases fuse to create a magnificently cerulescent soundscape.
It's mostly soothing stuff - the only real exception being "Peculiar Atlantis
Game Fish" which is not so much whale song as electric eel song as it skrates
and blips along.
The approach of this trio was nicely summed up by Aranos in a recent interview
on the Crouton web site: "[If] somebody wants a bit [of music] for a particular
purpose, I might tinker on a piano or a guitar to make up something they might
like. If they like it too simple I might try to irritate them. Like the recording
company who did not quite get the joke of my Country & Western song and wanted
more like that. So I changed it into a Bulgarian tune in 7/8ths with a distorted
fiddle solo and 5 minute outro for piano and foghorn. Strangely, the recording
co. did not ask for any more C&W, in fact I have not heard from them since."
Since there are only 500 copies of Bleeding In Behind Pastel Screens
out there, I suggest you hunt it out while you can.
