MARSEN
JULES
herbstlaub
CD/Lp, City Centre Offices
This is so beautiful, it almost hurts. Martin Juhls is
one of the few electronic artists that have a real feeling for sounds and
textures as well as no inhibition to look for great sounds in places other
electronic artists would scorn. Like classical music. A lot of people look
at me funny, when I tell them that I like Brahms. And Beethoven. Martin
Juhls aka Marsen Jules never would, I guess. After his last release on
Thinner/Autoplate records, “Yara”, which also got a rave review from he, he
takes another step forward into his truly own and unique vision of beautiful
sounds. There is nothing left of the crackling electronic ambient of
krill.minima, which most people still associate him. Now he has much bigger
and more aesthetically challenging yet spontaneously intriguing thoughts and
ides.
On “herbstlaub” he takes parts from classical
compositions, slow string sections, some fine horns, no melodic or rhythmic
parts, but those fine overtones, that sing and swing in those parts of
symphonies associated with springtime, life and birth. Then he mixes them
into loops that swirl into each other on various levels and dynamics,
producing an effect like swimming in a sea of sound for ever. Strings rise
up, whole orchestras rise and sink again, cellos are being looped into
longwinding bass-drones, with spheres of more orchestras washing away over
them likes waves at the shore. Instead of concentrating on the pauses and
hollow spaces in-between the orchestral performance – as he did on his
last records – he is now aiming for the full sound. The complete
aesthetical impact of a philharmonic orchestra packed into a multi-layered,
endlessly looped drone. It is impossible to still call this just ambient,
because it is so much more. It is the fusion of classical music and drone
into one big and finely carved block of living, organic music.
The different sounds of the various orchestra
recordings that (so I suppose) found their way into these tracks, are still
discernible, thereby forming the strange effect of listening to various
orchestras at once, who are all lost in time, endlessly repeating special
sets. This also means, that these tracks really couldn’t be played by a
traditional orchestra. More good remarks about Jules’ production skills
are his lack of interest in showing off. Rarely does he use common
estrangement effects, like noise as during “tous les coeurs de cette
terre”, the one track that stands out for its repeated string and piano
arpeggios and its static structure, that doesn’t seem to change with time,
yet does in so many ways. Another point: obvious electronic trickery.
Obviously it is the denseness and power of the whole sound that is in focus
here.
The effect wears off a little towards the end, when he
starts to use more noise and less overwhelming, full scale sounds in favour
of more sparse and discernible sounds, like harp-strings or piano. Honestly,
if these last two tracks stood on their own, they would still be great. So
if I really have something to moan about, I should chose the title. Because
“herbstlaub” (autumn leaves) doesn’t really fit the year of time, with
spring creeping up everywhere, easter just around the corner and the first
plants of salad just being put underground. Moreover, I don’t find
anything depressing or melancholic on this record. Maybe that is just
another common misunderstanding about classical music, that people think it
is always hard to listen to and melancholic. Not true at all. Of course,
there are no easy or ostentative jokes in symphonies, but a lot of joy and
beauty. And I also find the most aesthetically echoes in “Herbstlaub”.
