VITAMINS FOR YOU
I’m sorry
for ever and for always
CD, intr_version
From the first gentle electronic sounds and the voice sample to the last
meandering beat and subtle crackle, “I’m sorry for ever and for
always” will leave you on the edge of your couch, listening closely to the
sounds of sorrow and heartbrokenness, poured into tiny but crisp speckles of
music that will warm you like soft blanket on a cold night. Thankfully we
have reached a time and age in which electronic music and acoustic guitars
aren’t excluding each other any more. Because melodies and plucked guitars
add a lot of sensibility and even sensuality to these warm and gentle
electronic beats. Maybe electronic artists have been deconstructing and
destructing music so much in the last years, that they have started to come
back out in the other side. I know, artists on all corners of the world are
working on this project together unknowingly, but Vitaminsforyou is
different in more than just one aspect.
Next to the warmth and emotionality of his music, what you’ll next
realise is the complex and intricate layers of sounds, beats, samples,
melodies and harmonies and maybe even some effects to startle the
concentration of the listener, which have been placed over one another to
achieve a full and constantly satisfying production. If you read a lot of
record reviews, here is a sentence you have already heard a lot: with every
listening you’ll discover something new. This time around it is true. A
hidden vocal sample here (e.g. in the end of “ecologie+histoire pt.3), a
vocoder-effect there (e.g. in the beginning of “annie & nicki”),
water trickling here (e.g. in the middle of “annie & nicki”) or a
hidden frequency-mixup there (e.g. in the middle of “theme degigi”) and
so on. The last one might not be intended as such, though, and only a result
of my stereo-rack. Anyway, if you listen long enough to “I’m sorry for
ever…” it will make The
Notwist sound superficial. Can you believe that?
I guess that Vitaminsforyou works hard and long on the dynamics of his
songs. And they are definitely songs. Unlike most electronic music, which
produce tracks or even numbers, this album is a collection of proper songs.
Some of them take their time to grow out of their electronic basis, such as
“losing everything”, which features mainly echoy clicks’n’cuts
during the first two minutes, until an reversed organ sets in and some
whispered vocals add more and more to the atmosphere of standing in a dark
cave, alone but not afraid or freezing. Very much like life, you are alone
most of the time and even when you dare to raise your voice, it is not more
than a whisper in the surrounding noise. But even in a song like that and
with sounds like these (reversed organ!) Vitaminsforyou manages to start a
melody that will stick in your head for quite some time. It takes him over
four minutes to bring up a beat that deserves the name – a dark and
muffled bass-sound that beats and pounds more like random fingertapping
recorded with a contact-mic than something out of a drumbox. But who wants
to know, how things get done, when the magic is not in the how but the what?
Until the end of the song Vitaminsforyou has turned the whole thing around
– all ingredients like the beats the noises the vocals or the harmonies
remain, but their balance has changed so much, it feels as if you are
listening to a completely different song. And maybe you are.
By the time the album has reached track #8, you will be completely lost
in its fascination. But the Nick Drake-propelled-into-the-21st-century
“Quand peanut fait jodo” is, to me, one of the definite highlights of
this CD. Or rather, the highlight of the highlights. There is a
laid-back-melody, an eighties-clapping sound, a rhythm consisting mainly
marimbas interspersed with crackles, water-samples and strange sounds. It is
not even a real song and over faster than most other tracks, but the subtle
Latin influences make me wish it was summer again and me relaxing on a beach
or at least a longer remix of that track maybe by the Thievery Corporation.
But don’t get me wrong, this is still far from lounge-music. The next
track starts off only with a few noises, crackles, claps, tics or whatever
for about one hundred seconds before sounds break in-between the subtle
rhythmical structures. And another 140 seconds before the singing sets in,
and by then you have sunken so deep into the music, that the oncoming melody
is like pure bliss.
