With his No Fun Productions growing rapidly, having diversified from its role as the curator/promoter of the annual festival into an impressive limited-run record label and organizer of numerous year-round shows in New York, it’s good to see that Carlos Giffoni’s not too occupied with the business end of things to continue to actually make music as well. Last year witnessed the birth of Welcome Home, Giffoni’s “official” debut full-length, as well as Exprmntl Lvrs, the latest missive from Monotract, of which Giffoni’s a third, and a spate of smaller solo and collaborative releases. Toss in two European tours and a jaunt across Japan with Jim O’Rourke, and Giffoni’s been a busy man, indeed. Luckily, Carlos also had time to squeeze in Arrogance, his second solo offering released by No Fun, and the first cd issued by the label, which, up to this point, was a vinyl-only affair.
Welcome Home was an entirely digital affair, and Giffoni’s traditional array of improvising implements has commonly included a laptop, with Giffoni bent intently, face aglow as he peers into its display. Arrogance, however, finds Giffoni going wholly analog, shifting his attention away from the crystalline shards and slivers that formed, en masse the weighty heft of the music. On Arrogance, the rich, textured rumble of his analog synthesizers and their characteristically warm crunch are the tools of Giffoni’s trade, and the shift in instrumentation seems to have brought out a new angle in his work. A single track in Giffoni’s solo oeuvre, or that of Montract, for that matter, is often the product of what feels like a handful of musical ideas, combined and packed into a usually frenetic, though cohesive, whole. Arrogance, however, is the result of a simpler approach, one that, in Giffoni’s case, could be considered almost meditative. Each track tends to focus on a single mass of sound, a slowly moving and slowly changing collection of ragged tones, gritty gain, and roughly-hewn pebbles of static. At times he uses the snowball effect, with a piece building in intensity as it seems to pick up additional layers of sonic detritus, but often he opts for a more direct approach, opening with a forceful storm that’s slow to dissipate. Giffoni’s not playing the part of the brooding minimalist, however, and if the powerful crunch of the opener “No More Air,” is an aural steamroller, Giffoni isn’t afraid to topple the machine, leaving its wheels spinning in the air, or sabotage its progress, with parts unhinged, a cataclysmic crash looming as a constant specter in light of the music’s irregular gait.
Arrogance isn’t Giffoni’s most idiosyncratic work; much of the disc’s sound is something that will sound familiar to noise fans, in terms of the timbre of the sound and the way in which Giffoni molds it. Still, the album contains some of Giffoni’s most powerful music to date, and, regardless of stylistic conventions, Arrogance is a fine addition to his catalog. It remains to be seen whether this shift away from digital sound sources will be a long term one, but with a guy like Giffoni, there’s a good chance that whatever comes next won’t be such a single-minded endeavor. The synthesis of his analog and digital sounds could be an exciting one to behold, so now that the release of solo full-lengths is becoming a more regular occurrence for Carlos, let’s hope there’s not long to wait.
