These Hopeful Machines is, simply put, a true sonic listening experience. Seamlessly blending techniques both old and new [such as the stutter edit which BT himself created], BT offers up a double disc album that challenges one to truly listen to the music, as opposed to just allowing it to provide a background to life. The many layers and details to the music contained in the album allow for a listener to really pay added attention to what BT has created while at the same time coming together to form an amazingly coherent and mathematically precise work of beautiful art.
Interestingly, altho the music comes together in such a precise and refined manner, it's anything but dry, stiff, or rigid. Rather, BT uses his classical education to create music that evokes a powerful emotional response [something that was definitely true of his past works as well]. One can't help but feel awesome listening to "Suddenly," the opening song of disc 1. As the album continues, more emotions hit the listener [such as the yearning of "The Emergency," disc 1's second song]. The album not only causes one to truly pay close attention and intensely listen to the music but also causes [or maybe allows] the listener to think deeply and reflect. Importantly, These Hopeful Machines accomplishes all of this without requiring a burdensome effort in listening [something I sometimes felt with BT's 2006 album This Binary Universe, which may have simply been ahead of its time in a way].
These Hopeful Machines possesses a certain musicality that can be lacking in trance, electronica, dance, or whatever you want to call it. This surely relates to BT's classical music education. An example of this is the length of each song. Your average mainstream or pop song runs 3 or 4 minutes. In the world of trance and electronica songs often run much longer, from two to three times longer or even more. Yet with this added length, one is usually eagerly anticipating a small portion of the entire track with the majority simply feeling like buildup. This simply isn't the case with the songs on These Hopeful Machines. Each song certainly contains a buildup [or maybe even more than one], but most every each song is thoroughly enjoyable and purposefully crafted and placed. And while BT employed new techniques of his own [e.g., the aforementioned stutter edit] to accomplish all of this, he also made use of techniques and effects familiar to any listener of dance music. The end result of mixing old and new is what can truly be considered a true composition [much like in classical music].
In addition to redefining the listening experience with the actual quality of the music, These Hopeful Machines accomplishes this goal with its presentation. The album is basically two tracks, each running just under an hour. Each track contains 6 songs which are melded together in a manner that clearly indicates where one ends and another begins, while maintaining a perfect harmony and flow between them.* By presenting the album in this manner, BT hearkens back to the days of vinyl records or audio cassettes in a way [ further exemplified by the labeling of disc 1 as the A Side and disc 2 the B Side]. The intention appears clear: BT wants you to listen to the album in a particular manner, to truly make it an experience [somewhat like watching a movie]. While it makes for a great experience, it is also flawed in terms of how one experiences the album over time or on a repeated basis: sometimes you just want to hear one of the songs in particular, yet with the mp3 version of the album this is difficult to accomplish [I don't believe this is a problem with the CD version for the reasons detailed below]. But I believe it well within the right of the artist to present his or her work in the manner of his or her choosing.
The album is not perfect but even at its weak points it is still stronger than a lot of other stuff being put out. Interestingly, the experience of the album makes me wish I possessed the patience to go out and purchase the CD version, something I did for longer than many I know but that I haven't felt compelled to do recently. I feel as tho I'm missing out on a small part of the overall experience as BT intended it by not having that little case to peruse and explore.
* - I believe the CD version [I couldn't wait and downloaded the mp3 album from amazon, which comes with a bonus track] allows the listener to skip between tracks [not so easily accomplished with the mp3 album].
No comments:
Post a Comment