OPIATE
sometimes
CDEP/MLP, Morr
Opiate
is Thomas Knak from Copenhagen, not an unknown name to followers of releases
on Morr Music, due to several remixes he provided on various occasions.
“Sometimes” is his first “solo”-release, if terms such as these
still have any meaning in electronic music and contains material from the
last two years. Hm, two years and there is only six tracks with all in all
about 25 minutes? Regarding these statistics, it seems as if Knak is either
a slow worker or he doesn’t spend too much time producing music. Well,
listening to this EP you don’t get that impression, even though they might
be true. What is bad about taking your time, especially when doing something
as important as art / music? And what is the fault if you don’t find as
much time as you want to for your hobby, because you might be busy working
for a living? There is too much hastily produced shit out there, done by
spoiled kids with rich parents, who have no idea what “having to work”
means. Music where you know after a short listening that spending a little
more time working on it would have been an improvement. But anyway, if you
listen to “sometimes” you will know why it took Thomas Knak so long to
produce these six tracks.
Because
they are very intricate, complex and impeccably balanced mixtures of
classical instruments, digital soundmanipulations, field recordings and
nature-samples. And these very diverse and oppositional layers flow into one
another, complement each other and work together to produce an atmosphere of
tranquillity, ease and big, cinematic sweeping pan-shots. I have rarely ever
heard digital noises so much in sync with pianos, flutes and bird-samples,
for instance. Maybe on Sylvain
Chauveau’s “un autre decembre” (Fat Cat), but then the
analogy fall apart, due to the striking simplicity and reducedness of
Chauveau’s work in comparison to Thomas Knak’s almost overflowing and
grand size tracks. Even though both are very silent records, with very low
levels of volume, almost creeping back into the record itself – which of
course forces the listener to really focus in on the music, to start to
listen ! (What a simple statement, yet how uncommon it has become.) You have
to get to the fourth track on “sometimes” to get to a real drumbeat, and
then it is an analogue-sounding on. “Stp!” the fifth track, relies a lot
on electronic beats, with short and random spurs of Aphex-like drum-noises,
interspersed with dust-specks on a vinylrecord and a monotonous piano. And,
as much as this sounds like an obvious dance-floor / club-area-bummer, it
doesn’t ever lose the overall quietness and relaxedness of the whole
record.
