COH - Seasons
(Idea)
From Idea records comes Seasons, a 2x12" set of 180 gram, 45rpm vinyl packaged in a high UV gloss gatefold cover, printed in matte metallic inks. Luckily, the music on the records lives up to the elegant packaging, and Seasons proves to be much more than titillation for packaging fetishists. Russian born Ivan Pavlov provides Seasons music, his wife Nadja the artwork. The album explores each season of the year with a painted representation and a piece of music recorded during the month in question. "The Color of Beauty, Summer is Red" opens the set with an eerie painting of tree with hands for branches, some drooping and others fallen to the ground. Pavlov's music offers an equally dark, but rich picture through a dense soundscape of Janesse Stewart's "suffering" violin warped and augmented by Pavlov's computer effects. Dark, foreboding tones ebb and flow, almost in mimicry of the Doppler Effect, before erupting into fluttering electronic modulation. Untreated violin, all scratching and scraping lies underneath the deep, ominous tones, whose swells and fades begin and end severely, creating a palpable sense of tension. "As Ripe as Autumn's Tears" features Pavlov alone, on grand piano, over a quiet field recording of "November" rain (get it? get it?) made by Peter Christopherson. High notes from the piano's upper register are struck plaintively; like the corresponding painting, this side hints at more beauty, but it is muffled, obscured. There's an abundance of space, and occasionally Pavlov's computer effects lengthen the notes' sustain or add a rougher, jagged edge to the softy struck notes. Winter's artwork depicts a barren grove of trees, white upon a dark background, devoid of greenery or adornment. "Winter Brooding Underneath" is a dense, slow drone, a deep electronic purr similar to summer's mournful tone, but more relentless. Stewart's cello, again in the background, supplements the drone with slow bowing that arcs gently with Pavlov's mass of sound. "Spring Comes Shooting: Make Love, Make War" echoes the bright painting of two red trees, twisting in a coil that could imply copulation or violence. Pavlov's guitar, processed by someone quizzically called tin-y, is treated by all manners of electronic effects, creating through the use of delay and modulation a quickened pulse of shifting pitch, a rapid electronic heartbeat that could signify the passion of love or hate. The percussive, almost cyber-tribal beat soon decays into growing layers of static, only resurfacing in a far more cut-up, convoluted form, which is repeatedly ingested by the noisier drones.
Seasons is a well-done piece of musical/visual art, a work that doesn't compromise, and allows the beautiful to mix openly with the ugly, or, more precisely, constructs both in the same sounds, irrevocably linked. It's a duality that makes Seasons an alluring statement, and fully worthy of its elegant design and costly packaging.
|
