Cobblestone Jazz: 23 Seconds
Tuesday, 09 Oct 2007 12:01
Cobblestone Jazz produce minimal techno
K7 Records, out October 8th.
In a nutshell…
Ketamine house goes coffee table
What's it all about?
Now there's a million dollar question. To those who don't get it, minimal techno is literally the most boring thing in the world. Slow builds, long repetitive sections, a myopic focus on the smallest shift in noise and no vocals whatsoever understandably leaves a lot of people very cold indeed.
But then there are those that get extremely hot under the collar at the prospect of an 11 minute song centred around the distorted song of a ping-pong ball hitting a table.
Born out of a love of performing live, Cobblestone Jazz produce minimal which is slightly warmer than some of the other stuff out there – indeed, at places 23 Seconds even slides into Nightmares on Wax acid jazz territory.
Across ten tracks and a second disk showcasing a live performance, the record offers those new to minimal a relatively trouble-free introduction into the world of ket house, but the production is slick enough, and the live performance interesting enough, to get the die-hard fans gurning till dawn.
Who's it by?
More of a minimal household name than actually famous, Canadian Mathew Jonson has been making the sort of stripped-down techno that people who like dark sweaty basements and horse tranquilizers really love for a while now. He knocked out a superb remix of Believe by the Chemical Brothers and his track Marionette popped up on Death in Vegas' Fabriclive compilation.
Along with Danuel Tate and Tyger Dhula, he formed Cobblestone Jazz a few years ago so that they could all indulge their collected passion for improvising minimal acidy techno and having oddly spelt names.
As an example…
Asking about lyrics is tantamount to admitting you don't understand minimal.
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
It's really very hard to see any minimal getting mainstream recognition. Perhaps there was a chance for techno when Jeff Mills went and produced a host of his classics with a massive orchestra, but in general these genres resolutely remain the preserve of clubs and bedrooms.
Besides, can you imagine what it would be like if someone like Cobblestone Jazz to Richardo Vilalobos got nominated for an award and had to play at the ceremony? All those people sitting round tables in the dinner suits while a group of men huddled round two synths and sequencer and played a song that lasted a quarter of an hour. It would be a disaster.
What the others say
"Depending on your tastes, you'll likely find it either hypnotic or tediously meandering." John Donnelly at cdtimes.co.uk
"Despite unmistakable artistic values, listening to 23 Seconds track after track can be tiring" soundrevolt.com
So is it any good?
More than most, any review of minimal albums is going to a wickedly subjective affair. If you already think the idea of really long songs with no words and only very slight bleeps and blips is terrible, then it's unlikely that 23 Seconds is going to do anything for you.
Those who already like the music, or have an open mind, could well grow to really love the record.
From the out, Cobblestone have stressed that they are a live outfit who are into improvising even when recording in the studio.
On 23 Seconds, they certainly manage to create something quite special at times. Lime in the Coconut and Slap the Back are both perfect examples of minimal – songs which work equally well at home (provided you have a good enough stereo to do them justice) as they do in the club. For all their lack of sounds, there's something quite warm about the music. The driving bass lines and restrained brass combine to be rather cocooning about the music –think Aphex at his most melodic and least glitchy.
Then there are a couple of darker party tracks. Hired Touch and PBD are almost certain to crop up on a mix by someone like Claude Von Stroke or Alex Smoke in the immediate future. These are tracks that build in the truest sense of the word. Four minutes into Hired Touch and the song sounds pretty much as it did when it started, but there's an insistence to the beat and a way that extra sounds have been brought in that ensure that by it's end its real hands in the air stuff.
At some points though, the record slides into coffee table stuff. Opener Waiting Room is doing nobody any favours in this respect.
Then there is the second CD – principally consisting of a recording of a live performance at a Spanish club. Kicking off with a song that sounds like it's lifted from Smoker's Delight the set develops and grows in a wonderfully organic manner which leaves the listener wondering how they got from stoner table music to Sonar at 3am minimal in the space of 25 minutes. Mesmerising stuff indeed.
After the set, two other songs are tacked on to the album, almost like afterthoughts. The first, Dump Truck, could have easily been left out. But the other, India in Me, is maybe the finest song on a very fine album. Fidgety beats, haunting hooks and a driving topline make this 14 minute epic sound like the sort of music Mozart would have made if he was actually similar to his portrayal in Amadeus but born in 1978 and brought up on ecstasy, the KLF and M25 raves circa 1991.
7/10
James Cooper
Agree with this review? Have a different opinion? Let us know your thoughts (without being too abusive to our poor reviewers please) and we'll post the best ones on the site.
Write your comments below: