#shellac ninja

NOTE:

One cannot begin a conversation about Phil Elverum in 2018 without also making it a conversation about his sadly deceased wife, Geneviève Elverum. That much I discovered when I told my boyfriend I was going to write a review of Clear Moon. By the time the topic moved elsewhere we had both cried. It’s strange to feel agony for a man only one of us had met (my boyfriend) and neither of us knew. Such is the nature of adoration for an artist. Such is the nature, now, of Phil Elverum. He and Geneviève were the last people who deserved this.

Geneviève is on this album. She’s on its best track, Over Dark Water. One day, years ago, that wasn’t something that would have attracted anything more than a passing mention. She made music too and therefore had collaborated with Phil throughout their relationship. Her presence would not have been interesting to anybody who knew anything about Phil and his career. “There’s Geneviève again. Cool.” Not anymore.

Clear Moon is not a record about Geneviève’s death. Her absence was far from conceivable when it was created. She was still a person when it was created, and a very loved person at that.

REVIEW:

It’s impossible to know for sure what number album Clear Moon is in Mount Eerie’s discography. Wikipedia calls it the fifth. RateYourMusic has it in eighth place. What can be said for certain is that it’s part of a very intentional two album set. Clear Moon is the first installment, released in May 2012; Ocean Roar, the second part was released in August of the same year. Ocean Roar is good, but not part of this series (or at least, not planned to be at the time of writing), as Clear Moon is a far more refined, atmospheric and engaging record. 

Despite the premise of the self-contained two-part saga, Clear Moon is much more referential to what came before it. There are several mentions of concepts featured in in its predecessor Wind’s Poem and Phil’s other projects (such as the album Mount Eerie, by The Microphones), and several Elverum hallmarks are in full effect here: The opener, Through The Trees pt. 2, is a sequel to an 11 minute track from Wind’s Poem, and there are two instrumental “(Something)” tracks, which have appeared frequently throughout most of Phil’s albums from It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water (a Microphones album released in 2000). 

Clear Moon is a record about clarity. That’s not my interpretation, it’s Phil’s. “Clear Moon is more focused on those moments of clarity.” Yet, for a record about clarity, it’s very comfortable existing in a sea of obscurity and darkness. Yawning Sky’s lyrics question a belief and device that has been referenced in Phil’s songs for many years - the personification of the world (and the solar system, the universe, etc.) as an abstract entity. Yet simultaneously, it reaffirms a new device in his lyricism: ancientness. Referencing the song Ancient Questions from, you guessed it, Wind’s Poem, Yawning Sky talks about the ancient unknown, referring to lost history and memories, as he questions his own past. Ocean Roar has a track talking about “ancient times”, furthering the exploration of this concept. 

Clear Moon, while still featuring the acoustic guitar and semi-heavy distortion of its unique predecessors, introduces electronic instrumentation into Phil’s music in a move that contrasts his previously all-analog approach a lot. House Shape, after an uptempo, rock-influenced first section, transitions into a synth-led portion that’s the closest to pop that Mount Eerie has ever gotten (besides the disastrous Pre-Human Ideas compilation). And, almost humorously, it is immediately followed by the vast, industrial beauty of Over Dark Water. Here, the heavy influence the album has drawn from drone and ambient music is most percussive, as Phil and Geneviève harmonize over a distorted, percussion-less drawl, with haunting strings and feedback echoing in the distance. Clear Moon, which follows it after a very short (Something) track, further demonstrates this, as Phil’s occasionally auto-tuned(!) vocals sit above ambient organs, synths and guitars, as well as heavily reverberated orchestral drums and cymbals. The whole album has an underlying, cerebral mystique that is very comparable to Twin Peaks, especially on The Place I Live. 

In what is by this point an incredibly big discography, Clear Moon seems like a culmination of certain themes, an intended new artistic direction for Phil Elverum while yet remaining its own unique object (despite not having been intended to be so). Phil is at his most ambient and apocalyptic on this record, and the atmosphere conjured up is simply incredible. In the context of his career this was a risk that paid off massively, and that is why I like this album.

FAVOURITE TRACKS: OVER DARK WATER, THE PLACE I LIVE

FURTHER LISTENING:

In case you hadn’t gathered from this review, Wind’s Poem and Ocean Roar are both pretty essential listens to extract everything this record has to offer out of it.

Phil also released a 7″ of all the songs from this album and Ocean Roar being played at the same in 2012. A musical oddity, but an intriguing one if you’ve heard the originals.

The more traditional single To The Ground was also released in this period.

And just because, here’s an official live bootleg featuring a few songs from the album.

Next post: the first solo album from one of the biggest rock musicians on the planet.

Squarepusher’s second album - his first for his current label, Warp - is dependent on something best described not as complexity but controlled chaos. This is music that is simultaneously rigid and robotic, and yet falling apart at the seams. There’s rarely a moment in the record, released in 1997, that isn’t breathtakingly relentless in pace and attitude. Hard Normal Daddy, when viewed in the context of Squarepusher’s (vastly inconsistent) discography, is very easily pigeonholed as a transitional album: stuck between Feed Me Weird Things’ dark, obscure (albeit occasionally funky) drum-and-bass or Music Is Rotted One Note’s sloppy, experimental, electronic jazz fusion. Such a period is easily viewed when comparing two tracks from HND - Chin Hippy and Papalon are next to each other in the track listing and yet contrast the two central sounds on the album perfectly, as if one is the ying to the other’s yang (and 500 other metaphors to demonstrate juxtaposition, in stores now). Chin Hippy sputters and spurts in and out of an aggressive, almost atonal existence. It’s unquestionably electronic, as if such a thing needed to be clarified for an artist labelled as IDM so often.

...Well, actually, it does. This is Squarepusher. His musical intent does not begin and end at electronic music, and Papalon demonstrates this magnificently. The song could hardly be called an acoustic effort, not with smooth, jazzy electronic pianos surrounding the already synth-laden track, but they circle hectic, brushed drums and horns that glide effortlessly between notes, like an ethereal presence. As Papalon’s eight minutes quickly run out, the song gradually becomes slower and slower, but loses none of its intensity; a gradual buildup of energy erupts towards the end of the second half of the piece, leaving a wonderful crescendo in its wake. 

These two tracks are merely two extremities. The rest of the album combines the two to make what was at the time a startlingly innovative mixture that no other musician would’ve likely thought of without Tom Jenkinson’s guidance. Beep Street uses a mysterious, ambient-leaning keyboard melody over jazzy, sickeningly quick drums. (The snare resembles an electric drill at points.) E8 Boogie is an early demonstration of Jenkinson’s ridiculous amount of talent on the bass guitar, coupled with a irresistible, funky, wahing lead. The whole album wavers between its musical identities, and the musical identities of its creator, and while he would go on to explore his jazz, funk and electronic interests in later projects, this remains the most compelling and engaging fusion of all three. Though the Richard D James Album predates HND, Squarepusher’s influence upon the former (and Aphex Twin’s forthcoming glitch/drill-and-bass material in Drukqs and other projects) is obvious once you have a knowledge of both artists’ material. The two shared a lot of musical genetics, and collaborated heavily in the development of their ideas and musical intentions. By fusing jazz and the (at the time) barely-emerging drill-and-bass genres, Squarepusher created an obscure, modern classic that is undeniably intriguing, even if it’s not to your taste. Give it a listen if you haven’t already, because I like this album.

FAVOURITE TRACKS: PAPALON, BEEP STREET

FURTHER LISTENING:

Music Is Rotted One Note was Squarepusher’s next album after Hard Normal Daddy, and went completely nuts. Tom Jenkinson threw structure out of the window and instead created an obtuse jazz-fusion suite. Give it a go if you like this and you want to be challenged.

Squarepusher released several projects in 1997, but the most remembered is probably the Big Loada EP. This EP contains his biggest hit, Come On My Selector; Chris Cunningham made a video for the song in 1998. 

The compilation Burningn'n Tree was released a few months after Hard Normal Daddy.

Squarepusher never quite made it back up to the standards of his 1996-1998 period, in my opinion. That isn’t to say he didn’t make any other good projects - Go Plastic contains many of his greatest hits and Ultravisitor is considered by many to be a great album - but they aren’t classics in the same way his releases around that time are now.

Next post: a singer-songwriter’s most ominous and apocalyptic work to date.