SLOWCREAM
– live long and prosper
(digital, nonine)
If you are bored (and rightly so) by the mass of same
sounding and lame ambient and deep electro music available online around the
globe, then you might want to head over to nonine records. There are some
online labels that release anything that is close to what they have released
before, a lot of times just too close, and they turn towards release number
75 within two years because the appeal of quantity versus quality is just
too much if you want to reach critical mass with your label. Most of those
downloadable albums are for free then, consequently, because it is online
and that means “for free” in classical greek. (Ha ha, I almost wrote
“classical geek” here – how fitting...) Other labels are hard to find,
mostly because it is very frustrating to check out five to seven releases to
see if a label is worthwhile being bookmarked. Also because most of the time
they aren’t. 12rec is an exception that comes to my mind quickly, and so
is nonine.
Nonine works in the same area as 95 % of all online
labels do – that kind of post-global, urban nomad, laptop working electro
ambient / dub, that reflects the sounds of nighttime life from the four lane
highways to the dark clubs and from the collective office space at midnight
to wi fi enhanced restaurants with fusion cuisine. But – and that is
important – their releases always go a long way further down a lesser
trodden path, reflecting their own processes instead of being fascinated by
their own surface, and confront the listener with awkward sonic situations
underneath their pulsating layers of sound.
Slowcream is the project name of label runner mee
rabenstein and therefore demands special attention, because it is a decent
guess to expect the core idea of the label to be found in the label
runner’s own music. Then it is about soft electronica built from
microscopic parts into fascinating layers and landscapes. And about an
obsession with structures and textures rather than melodies. As the voice on
the third track “suburb novel”, in a style between Dalek and Zappa’s
talking style tells us. The agenda being about trying to not be a part of
the structure, where ironically or not the use of vocals and the meaning of
the word are part of another reflective level versus their own meta-logic.
But also the reflection of past centuries of music
composition play a role in the production visions of me rabenstein. Like the
nocturne piano creeping up again and again on “shadow meat”, bedded into
a framework of slowly disintegrating electronic sounds, and then finally
also dissolving into mute effects and structural breaks. Or the violin on
“wife’s tales”. The play with beats and rhythms – a main stay of all
kinds of electronic music usually - of Slowcram is also working on various
levels. Never once do the rhythms reach the bland directness and
straightness of lounge radio or coffee house music. Sometimes they play with
that superficial jazz vibe (another musical retrograde towards the past),
for instance on “twilight roam” with its hinted at electronic piano and
funky drums, but those are quickly reworked and transferred into a different
setting to change the meaning almost 180 degrees.
The curse of electronic music is its own sudden death
rate. Most releases hyped today have become stale and oldfashioned within a
short period of time. In other genres there are a mass of albums that were
disregarded at the time they came out but have remained silent masterpieces
for decades. Electronic music is already reflecting the future of
fragmented, converged and made to measure direct marketed music, where
energy providers will have taken over telco providers, who will be the main
music producers and distributors, and 99.9 percent of all music is stale and
boring. There is some reason to think that “live long and prosper” is a
wish just as much directed at anyone as at the album itself as well and also
that it remains an album that can be returned to on and off over the years
without feeling bad.
