Tim Held – Alb(L)um
DL
February
2014
Seattle
based electronic musician and producer Tim Held releases his new album.
Somewhere on
the route between the fictitious Cities of Dan Friel and Modified Toy
Orchestra, there are deserted Townships called Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk and
VCMG. They were once vibrant trading
locations that people stopped off at to listen to Portion Control or an Erasure
instrumental b-side, but now they only hold the echoes of those tones.
The sounds
have now morphed into something else.
The mutation that shall henceforth be called Tim Held has randomly taken
various melodies and spewed them into synthesizers hooked to guitar pedals via
a Black Pus sound wall. Over four dozen
sequenced tracks were transformed and snippets of each one were then removed
from the huge collection and stored in the Grandmaster Gareth velvet bag.
These little
pieces have now grown. Grown into
something far more interesting and superseding the sounds of whistling
tumbleweeds in the barren desert of twenty-first century synth music. The crunching, moon stomp and post ambient
delights are now being shepherded by Held in a fashion that only today’s most
inventive musicians can dream of.
There are
now echoes of the future being built with the blueprints of Grumbling Fur and
sometimes even Public Image Limited, and the lost Townships can now dream of a
vibrant new era. With additional sound bytes from trans-Atlantic podcasts, a
shiny new monument will be built for the disciples to worship. It shall be called Alb(L)um and we will bow
at its foot in awe and delight.
Don’t just
take my word for it. Listen to the album
with its Blip and its Hyperloop Hareem and its Dharma Dan and tell me that
you’re unaffected. Tell me that you hear
something like this every day of your life.
Tell me that this isn’t intelligent, accomplished experimental synth
pop.
2014 is a
happier place now that Tim Held is here.
9/10
Links
Published on Louder Than War 16/01/14 - here
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