I Only Like Difficult Art (and music) – (Difficult Art And Music) – You might want to spend your money on sherbet and cheese strings instead of this compilation and aliens might already be amongst us or at least amongst the voices in your head and who do you invite to Summer barbecues anyway? If you’re enjoying this review so far then please just give us your credit cards. I should probably be looking at some accounting soft wear rather than trying to take five minutes out of my busy schedule to make sense of the sixteenth track on this album, something called Buy This by someone called David Curington.
The sixteenth track is probably the most scrambled of tracks on this rather rewarding album and there’s no reason why this so called review needs to start anywhere other than with track sixteen and as always I am multi-tasking and there’s washing to get in and photos to edit and paint to throw and a million e.mails demanding answers. Track sixteen is where we are when the review demands it be started and oh, there is rest-bite, track seventeen, a soothing five minute instrumental piece of rather beautifully radiant drone called Lux Brumalis by someone or maybe some people called Heavy Cloud.
Came across this album just floating by on Bluesky a couple of weeks back, the title got me curious, hopeful…
Hang on, let’s start with folky glitch of J.Lynch and the beginning of the whole affair, it was J and the opening track that hooked me in to the whole album in the first place, hooked me into an album called, rather annoyingly as it turns out, I Only Like Difficult Art (and music) with his/her opening track. Yeah, I know, that title makes if sound like an album that might just be just a little bit up itself and yeah, they were too cool to follow back on Bluesky, but hey, when it comes down to it, most of it really isn’t that difficult. Actually a lot of it is rather ‘nice’, and yes, sounding rather like a lot of things that land here on an almost daily basis (yes I know are van be both difficult and nice but…). Do rather like the album, it is mostly very easy to listen to, it is all rather enjoyable, it is a very well put together well paced compilation, nothing difficult about it, well maybe Mr. Curington’s climax but hey, that does come at the end of almost a couple of hours and there is that relief of Heavy Cloud straight after Mr. C’s contribution.
That almost folky glitch of J.Lynch and the beginning of the whole affair does get us off in a positivemanner and Federico Balducci & fourthousandblackbirds do lead us into a delicately inviting hole that, without reallt taking us anywhere (not even Blackburn, Lancashire), does quietly take us to Warren ‘Kanninen’ Rasmussen‘s Mazda Bongo Dream Potato which in turn is a rather sweetly smelling well behaved rose of a track and really nothing like the title suggests. Kind of nice (once again) actually, silly title aside, that title does it no favours, ‘wacky’ when it really isn’t and whatever comes next has not been approved for therapeutic use; something by someone, I assume it is a ‘someone’, someone calling themselves Witch on Horseback, something that sounds nothing like a witch on horseback and more like a harmless nerd in a bedroom. A spoken word meander over another warm drone and something about mud freezing and the distant sound of animals that really don’t have you afraid – you know the animals will keep their distance until they need to eat you that is.
Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully passes by in a rather pleasantly positive kind of way, I mean we’re not talking Weasel Walter type difficult music here are we? There’s no Flying Luttenbachers style difficulty here and this is all, as I keep saying, rather ‘nice’ and mostly pleasantly uplifting and really not quite living up to what it said on the tin. This is in fact about as far away from difficult as it gets and is mostly rather enjoyable as Dan (I hope he doesn’t mind us calling him Dan?) moves us, via a hint or two of Gazelle Twin’s Black Dog period, on rather nicely to Will Parker‘s rather minimally enjoyable Study for Pylons and Abandoned Piano without us really noticing and then more of a similar nature in the form of Chelidon Frame‘s rather beautiful The Mezzotint. Nah, this isn’t difficult, this is inviting warmth, accessible, mellow, welcoming, certainly not difficult…
This is a release on what they (rather pretentiously) say is a “boutique ‘record’ label, specialising in short-run, research-orientated, art-objects. Focussed on all manner of experimental, challenging composition”.
And we’ve just been eased into the light sound of the waves and sea-splash of Scolpaig and something called Spaceport Six which once again is all very minimally soothing and rather expressively inviting. The equally nice and polite Polygone come/comes along next with a five minute extract of something called Tactics Faculty that, as nice as it is – and I am really honestly really enjoying this album – sounds like many things of this nature that come this way on an almost weekly basis without really taking these ideas that much further than most of those things that land here do, it does shimmer in a semi abstract kind of way, it is worth lingering over, the whole album is. Here comes Arvik Torrenssen and a quiet piece called Seppäeraa…
Wonder where the “research-orientated, art-objects” element come in? A website for the label might help maybe?
“Celebrating its three year anniversary, Difficult Art and Music presents a double-album of forward-thinking experimental composition. Inspired equally by the classical composers of the Avant-Garde – the likes of Ligeti, Kagel, Young and Cage – alongside the more expressive end of contemporary electronic music, DAAM has spent the last three years championing the awkward, the academic and the overlooked. Founded by the audio-visual artist Distant Animals (who has released work on labels such as Hallow Ground, Cruel Nature, and Waxing Crescent), the label’s anniversary compilation brings together material drawn from their back catalogue, including rarities from limited releases and the sub club. Alongside this, an album of brand new materials showcases the diverse work of the artists affiliated with the label.
Featuring the likes of Asynchronous Drone Orchestra founder Chelidon Frame, the punk-ambient artist Nobuka, and Johny Lamb (the experimental alter-ego of the Cornish folk musician Thirty Pounds of Bone), ‘I Only Like Difficult Art (and Music)’ offers a rare glimpse into a network of international, conceptual artists working outside the normal confines of genre. From textural-manipulations of traditional Cornish folk music to studies of electromagnetism in abandoned pianos, minimal modular techno to sonic reimaginings of Satre and M. R. James via algorithmic ensembles, DAAM proudly fly’s the flag for the more unusual end of modern composition”.
The album features nearly two hours of music across two discs as it “juxtaposes nuanced long-form drone and ambient works against irreverent collage, classical minimalism and aggressive modular synthesis” – really not encountering anything that aggressive here, these people must lead very sheltered lives if they see anything here as aggressive? “With a history of not only releasing music but also books, sculptures, scores and art pieces, the label specialises in work that is wilfully academic and inter-disciplinary. I Only Like Difficult Art (and Music) demonstrates this approach with aplomb: an album that arrives complete with a fold-out poster and a label manifesto / thesis alongside the music”.
I’ll try not to sneer or snigger about something describing itself as “punk-ambient” and avoid the idea of a thesis and get on with it all (surely if you’re going to have a thesis and a manifesto you really shouldsurely have a website in this day and age?
Arvik Torrenssen‘s piece Seppäeraa is rather quietly beautiful, once again minimal, a less is more gentle movement, easy to listed to, am I missing the irony of the album and the label’s rather pretentious name? Are they have a giraffe at my/our expense here? This is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, this a a gentle bath of ambient warmth, this is smoother than smooth, this floatation tank easiness, this is Rothko on a warm evening after a very nice day where everything went well, this is flat calm and no wind. Okay, here comes something called Storm, a piece by someone called Simon McCorry that broods for a moment and hang on, is it going to kick off? is this where things get difficult? It does have a touch of menace to it, a touch of oh look at what’s coming, a threat on the horizon, it is a rather dramatically rewarding piece of music that, if you let it, does have you a little on the edge for a moment or two – we’re half way through the ten minutes now and if the storm is coming it isn’t here yet but then the magic of this piece is in the anticipation, the tension, the dark of the sky, the threat of the storm that never does arrive. This is a track that is all the better for that non-arrival of any kind of storm…
And here’s someone called John Garner and something called Soundcheck (ft. John Pope), something that sounds way too thought about and considered, way too performed to actually be a soundcheck (but that does give me an idea for a compilation album, we’ve got some great soundcheck recordings kicking around here, fractured bits of song, random bits of noise never intended to anyone other than maybe a sound engineer, everyone should get to witness an Alex Ward soundcheck once if their lives) and once again John Garner eases us sublimely into Nobuka‘s Veculer without anyone here really noticing it had done. This is like a really well hung group show of calm semi-abstract paintings in a really formal clean-cut white-walled rather polite art gallery (the album artwork isn’t up to much by the way, for a label with such a seeming high – dare we say pretentious – opinion of itself in terms of art, that cover is bloody awful, well actually no, it isn’t interesting enough to be bloody awful, it really is just an average nothing of an album cover). Do like this Nobuka piece, you’re going to tell me she or he did the album art now aren’t you? Actually the artwork isn’t credited on the Bandcamp page (which is where I’m listening to it from). Rather bad form for a label that says they release art not to credit the cover artist I’d venture to say…
On to Felipe Vaz and a six and a half minute extract of The Well Frozen Piano that doesn’t feel cold as much as it is (almost) frozen in time and takes us back to the only really difficult thing on here and the aforementioned Buy This by someone called David Curington that is perfectly placed almost at the end of it all as the only genuinely ‘difficult’ piece on the album.
Self-important aloof pretension and awful title/artwork aside, this is actually a really good album, well worth investigating if you have a moment, in fact if you can shut out the unfriendly pretention and the the fact that it really isn’t that difficult, then I’d recomend it… (sw)
Bandcamp – that’s all there is, just a Bandcamp page, at least that’s all I can find, well they are on Bluesky of course, they claim on there to be a “Music and Art label specialising in the avant-garde, the academic, the conceptual, and the challenging”, are they though? Really? Or are they just a little bit up themselves and not quite walking it like they talk it?
THE ORGAN 