Thursday 30 July 2015

My Death Waits For Me (in Poundstretcher) / Orquesta de Instrumentos Autóctonos y Nuevas Tecnologías/ & CD Bargains



Before contemplating my death whilst standing in the queue at Poundland I'd been rummaging through the cheap CD shelves in Oxfam. I mean really cheap. I mean £1.49 for three. I don't normally look there, being obsessed with books, but for some reason I was drawn to the shelf. It looked like nothing would tempt me, even at that price, until I found Aphex Twin's Ventolin, which encouraged me to continue. Then I found Good Looking's Points In Time...yes, good, now I only need one more...flick...flick...what's this? Orquesta de Instrumentos Autóctonos y Nuevas Tecnologías? Eh? Well the sleeve looked quite interesting...open it up...CD and DVD...mmm...why not, I could afford to gamble just-under-50p...

Turns out the Orquesta make very interesting music. I'd direct you to a site but they're all in Spanish and I don't think you'd bother. So I hit the 'Shopping' tab, out of curiosity, having typed in a search title...


...OK, but I did find it on one site for $130 (!). 


The sleeve notes are in English as well as Spanish, which helps. It's a long time since I bought music without knowing what to expect and the unexpected is what I got here. It's hard to describe the music without going some way into the philosophy espoused by the orchestra's leader, Alejandro Iglesias Rossi, to do it justice. Don't worry, I won't do that. Suffice to say it's very minimal in approach, extremely restrained, both modern-sounding and ancient, utilising tape along with, say, violin. Weirdly, via a completely different route, much of the sound is akin to the kind of Dark Ambient made by Demdike Stare or Haxan Cloak, that kind of thing, minus the obvious modernist touches which bely the influence of rare VHS Euro horror tapes. Grimorio de Fuego by Luciano Borrillo is absolutely the kind of thing an audience-in-waiting would love. I found it on Souncloud, being uncertain how much the orchestra's version differs, if at all, from the original. Either way, both are stunning...


...the only photo of Orquesta de Instrumentos Autóctonos y Nuevas Tecnologías I could find is this one, which suggests to me something like a cross between Sun Ra's Arkestra and a gathering of the True Detective (first series) fan club...a good look...


...the YouTube clips I've found show the orchestra livening things up for the stage; lots of drumming and showy performance antics, but the CD I got today is better than they suggest.

LTJ Bukem. Drum 'n' Bass. The Good Looking comp livens me up after a while spent with the dark orchestral manoeuvres. - yep, sounds good after all these years, in which I've spent more time replaying No U-Turn and Metalheadz rather than Good Looking, but to my surprise I'm enjoying the label's classic 'sophisticated' sound, by which I mean, in case you didn't know, they aimed to be classy and distance themselves from either the roughneck roots or Techstep trend of the day, both of which were right up my alley. 


And Aphex Twin, whose music I haven't bought for years either. This is the Sire release, featuring all the mixes of Ventolin. I particularly like mix 2 with its 'laughing by mum'. Most of the mixes are good, if dating ('95) obviously, they remind me of a time when Electronica was progressive, throwing up new angles every week, seemingly, with twisted takes on everything from techno to Breakbeat etc.


So, yes, I'm in the queue at Poundstretcher, watching a little (they all are, aren't they?) old lady leave the shop, thinking 'She looks a bit like my mum', then pondering The Big Sleep, would you believe, since that's what she's sleeping. A pile of bones...is that it? "There must be life after death", I imagined a believer whispering in my ear, to which I replied: "No, there isn't", somewhat gloomily, for although my belief should, theoretically, enhance every minute of the day, it also loads each one with unbearable significance if our aim is to make the most of Life. Then I tried to imagine what it was like to sleep The Big Sleep...the light goes out...and never comes on again. I was glad to be served in the shop. Having to pay for the bird seed snapped me out of such gloomy thoughts. 

TTFN


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