CD, Tympanik Audio, 2008
www.tapeface.com
Tympanik Audio is gracing the world with another innovative IDM/Noise release. So far, all the albums released on the label have been appealing to both eye and ear. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that the label has potential to be the next Ant-Zen. However, this release had me a bit worried…
My anxiety started with concern for the para-text (if such a thing can exist in music), or rather text, on the cover and the writing (or maybe the lack of). I’ve gotten a bit spoiled with idea of Tympanik releases looking very “pretty,” and this one just didn’t seem to be doing it for me. While it does come in an expensive to produce digipack, the graphics are very minimal and there’s very little writing on the inside or outside of the sleeve. I sat there for a while, in a sleep deprived state, trying to decipher what the title of the album was. In a simple white text on the cover, it reads “the i nstitute of r andom events,” realizing that this was an attempt at intertextuality my interest started rising.
I started listening to the CD after being awake for too long and immediately realized how appropriate the album title is. These days, the IDM game-plan, seems to be: chain a series of random break loops, hooking them together with a lot of warm pads/or really wet-reverb orchestral sounds. So it might be a bit redundant to use a referent such as “random” in the title; but I was caught off-guard on several occasions.
“The Institute of Random Events” seems to successfully combine all the common motifs in the genre. Most songs include a multi-layered pad with an envelope that slowly opens through the course of the track. There’s a few breaks loops being worked on throughout the track, always click/pops and an insertion of random warm/organic sounds. The rhythmic loops are mostly downtempo with a slightly sped-up feel, and create a nice contrast to the melodics going on in the background of the track. There are no redundancies, and each track has a unique feel to it. The dissonant strings on the track “Pretend Not To See,” make for an interesting contrast with the almost club-worthy tracks such as “Shadowstain.”
While there are a lot of events in each track, there’s an enchanting minimal feel to the whole album. “The Institute of Random Events” does seem to carry the emotional depth of other Tympanik releases, however it’s a slightly different direction then most albums on the label. If you’ve been awake for too long, and require an album to help you think while you slowly pass out from exhaustion on your ugly couch – this is it! Or, if you wanted Hecq to do an album with breaks and click/pops, this might be as close as it gets.
[10/10]
— Lemmy S