THE GREEN KINGDOM – twig and twine

(CD, Own)

To praise nature is probably the oldest reason for art there is. From the primeval celebration or sacrifices to praise or appease the unknown gods to the introspectiveness of the lush stills and florals of the renaissance or orchestral music of the late 19th, early 20th century and also more and more again in the current abstract artforms, be they paintings, installations or music. The Seventies and Eighties seemed to take focus away from the endless fascination of nature as a source for inspiration while computers and synthetics pushed themselves into the foreground. But, it seems, the human brain and mind are after all organic so they probably tend to prefer organic visions to purely rational art. Taking back a bit in the theoretic department and toning down the idea of concentrating the history of art in two sentences, as I have done above so brashly, maybe, with more ease and security, it could be said that between the poles of abstract, edgy, architectural, cubist sound on the one hand and more flowing, organic, dynamic, romantic, soothing sound on the other hand, the latter one seems to be more in the focus currently.

Michael Cottone gave himself the moniker The Green Kingdom for his music production, so it is easy to figure out where he likes to see himself. Putting “The Creator” first in his thanks list is another hint, and one that makes the old punkrocker in me cringe, though putting it this way it seems, that Cottone is not at all a right-wing Christian or fundamentalist catholic. Leaving aside the theoretical question of who the creator is or what exactly he created and what that means for the daily lives of each us individually and as a society (though very interesting questions, yet we usually act as if nothing is as important as music and everything else comes second here) “Twig and Twine” a wonderful, soothing album of organic electronic music. Full of appreggios and glissandi of either real or synthetic instruments, with subtle sparkling noise or lowly dimmed beats in the back as a fitting backdrop to the gentle plucked chimes, vibraphone or strings in the fore. The opener “into the magic night” could be a direct reworking of a romantic chamber piece (these reworkings seeming to be another trend in electronic music currently, see “XVI reflections on classical music” or “Re:Haydn” for reference).

Mainly Cottone seems to search for ease in his music, trying to pacify the endless, devouring current of noise (including real noise, intended sound accompaniement aka muzak, information bits, perception constipation, etc.) that is all around us. He gets out into nature and then back to his computer and tries to drag and drop the emotional experience into music. The result is wonderful, organic, flowing electronic music. Mastered by Taylor Deupree and he is also no surprise to see on such a record. I will stow this away next to my “old” CDs on intr_version, 12k and especially Mitchell Akiyama, close to Hauschka and other nature loving electronic artists. Because, there is no contradiction in this. You don’t have to be a complete postmodern, cyber-surfer to produce music on your laptop. That personae is already passé, to remain in your terminology.

The real experience of sitting at the edge of a sea in the woods or on the top of a hill looking out at a forest underneath is still a lot better than the musical re-carnation of it presented here or anywhere. It would be sad if it were different, but maybe this thought shall act as a caveat in our time of hyper-realism and overdriven experience seeking in videogames, action movies and music videos. And even though that push of adrenalin is good from time to time, it is also well worth it to go to the completely different side from time to time as well and reset your soul to zero, soothe your brain from the day to day mangling it receives from mass media, social media and 24/7 connectedness. And if, for whatever reason you can’t get out to the countryside (or on top of a skyscraper to look at the city below) you want to lay down with headphones and crawl into the countryside in your mind. And for this use “twig and twine” is currently my absolute favorite.

www.ownrecords.com
10/2009