Story, Tim: Buzzle

There's something always alluring and compelling about music that is at once recognizable and at the same time spurns typical forms. Buzzle, a Tim Story project, offers that a glimpse at just such unself-conscious and highly self-confident hybridization. Beautifully languorous, moody, smoky and lush instrumental musics here slip into the ambient, then away to moments of jazzy-bluesy stretches that recall The Cinematic Orchestra and then off again to those oddly assembled then disassembled little settling spots of the fully formed and formless so expertly teased into existence by Brian Eno – once and only once – on the first installment of his Music for Films.

These 14 pieces all possess that combination of gleaming surface, a physically convincing soundstage and the most lovely inner detail. As only one instance, a 'cello passage played by Martha Reikow draws your attention to exactly where it seems it should be when still another what? – string trio? – plays in and out of the gaps, remote and rightly suggesting that other stuff, important stuff, is happening too. Just elsewhere. This sharp but still roving focus is accomplished by Story's compositional skill, one that must be shaped by a frank and open interest in much more than any one aspect of expression. Aided by the percussion work of Louie Simon and Scott Wilkinson – here recalling the remarkably live sound and fluid style of Luke Flowers – and Tom Caulfield's orchestra, Anna and Cara Story's vox and, to top out the ensemble, Hans-Joachim Roedelius' piano contribution on "something happened here (remix)".

Buzzle is a perfect and intriguing union of the electronic and acoustic. Without close study it would be difficult to even vaguely determine just how a particular shimmer of decay came into being: some treated 'cello tails or some virtual synth, or some DAW-originated cross-pollinated jitter. After all, it's a CD of music that lives in the details. And there at least 100,000 or so to consider.

Track Listing
1) rota
2) prelude to biting
3) decelerate or fasten
4) vitreoous
5) monkey builderizer
6) pol teesh
7) otherize
8) dust bale hole
9) café kaputt
10) the woman singing
11) albacranky
12) you are patient
13) something happened here (remix)
14) yeh!

Added: February 16th 2007
Reviewer: Kerry Leimer
Score:
Related Link: Tim Story Website
Hits: 2022
Language: english

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