| Textura
Excellent also is Dale Berning's The Horse and Camel Stories,
an hour-long collection of nineteen short pieces, the first fourteen
of which were originally composed for Hiraki Sawa's film Going Places
Titting Down. The film is about make-believe journeys to far-away places
(a child riding a blue wooden wooden horse transports himself without
ever leaving his room) and Berning's entrancing electro-acoustic lullabies
ably complement that dream-like theme. A sense of child-like innocence
and wonder permeates the softly stuttering settings that Berning assembled
from antique music boxes, chimes, and field recordings made at the country
house and garden where Sawa filmed (water running in the bathroom, rain
water dripping on stones, wind chimes, clocks, birds). Of the other
five pieces, four are also associated with the work of Hiraki Sawa while
“Flock” was composed for a film by Stephanie Caw. Meditative, meandering
vignettes like “Another One” and “Fireworks” exude a calming quietude
that's hard to resist while “Keyhole” and “Caravanséail” call to mind
the mechanical charms of Colleen et les boîtes à musique. By now it
should be obvious that The Horse and Camel Stories is the kind of 12k-styled
luminescence that should strongly appeal to fans of Sawako and Colleen.
Autres Directions
Flaü re-édite The Horse And Camel Stories, déjà sorti en 2006,
sur vinyle, via Bo’Weavil Recordings. Dale Berning a composé ce disque
pour illustrer un film : il a enregistré, sur les lieux de tournage,
des bruits de salle de bain, de vent ou d’horloge.
A l’écoute, cette galette dégage une atmosphère fortement accueillante,
fraîche et mélodique, où transparaissent divers éléments sonores reconnaissables.
Alignant chacun de ses titres tel une nouvelle vignette délectable,
The Horse And Camel Stories évoque la grâce d’Alejandra & Aeron.
Ondefixe
Auréolé du même halo de douceur que les précédentes sorties du
label (Mirror flake de Cokiyu et Blue de Part Timer), The horse and
camel stories se veut plus abstrait et dénudé. Artiste polyvalent basé
à Londres, Dale Berning mêle intimement musique, dessin, art graphique
et cinéma. Ainsi la pochette est-elle signée de sa main délicate, tandis
que les titres ont tous servis de support sonore à des courts et longs
métrages (les 14 premiers titres, composés pour le film Going places
titting down de Hiraki Sawa, ont fait l'objet d'une édition vinylique
chez Bo'Weavil en 2006, sous le nom de The horse stories).
En lieu et place de chevaux et de chameaux, on voit volontiers des nymphes,
chrysalides et papillons, tant ses esquisses sonores dégagent fragilité,
légèreté et microscopie.
Une heure durant, boîtes à musique côtoient cristal et porcelaine fêlés,
pour être ressoudées à la colle numérique puis mêlées à des samples
naturalistes et domestiques qui évoquent souvent un univers aquatique.
Le tout évoluant en permanence dans une sphère à l'échelle très réduite.
Eu égard à leur étonnante unité de ton, ces histoires auraient gagné
à se faire plus concises (l'engourdissement de l'esprit est garanti).
Toujours est-il que ces comptines papillonnantes sont idéales pour accompagner
le sommeil de bébé.
Cyclic Defrost
Dale Berning builds Reichian loops out of chiming bells and windy,
metallic clatter on his debut effort, The Horse and Camel Stories. The
atmosphere is very much that of a fairy-tale, the air warmed by a sandy
hum and maintained by a sense of austerity. The tales are presented
in a minimal fashion, largely stripped of melodic flesh, and adorned
with deep chimes and flitting electronic confetti punctuating the silent
places in between the gently reverberating acoustic noises.
The sparse, endless motion of the glowing synths, altered with subtle
filter effects, and highlighted by the sweet clarity of a nursery rhythm,
is at times transfixing. All the same, the pieces run easily into one
another, and eventually come to sound surprisingly flabby and ungainly,
despite the nod towards minimalism.
Compositions meet with better results when lava-like low end drones
are dipped in a bee’s nest of grating static and form interminable circles
that seduce like the dizzying motion of a whirlpool. The work knows
few layers, but much of the album is without a trace of human intervention,
and in this virginal state, its idealized twilight atmosphere and rose-tinted
nostalgia is often becoming.
Norman Records
Twinkles... Colleen is the queen of it but alas she hasn't had
a sex change. It's Dale Berning taking the twinkle crown this week.
Although they could be royalty. The king and queen of twinkles ruling
the land of twinklelsville where unicorns roam free and the dog poop
on the street is actually made of organic fairtrade chocolate. 'The
Horse and Camel Stories' has the man in full on twinkle mode. All malfunctioning
music boxes. It's like a big pretty lullabye. Dreamy snoozeville ambient
lushness. Originally appeared on vinyl on the Bo Weevil label and now
on CD through Tokyo's Flau label.
Boomkat
This album draws Dale Berning's soundtrack works together onto
a single volume, with the main portion of the disc being taken up by
the pieces composed for Hiraki Sawa's film Going Places Sitting Down.
Some of you may already be familiar with this music thanks to Bo Weavil's
LP only release The Horse Stories, but this release marks the first
time this music has made it over to CD. In hindsight it all makes far
greater sense on a digital format: the lulling electroacoustic treatments
are often very quiet and highly detailed. Some of the more concrète
sounding tracks, based around location recordings, are best served by
headphone listening, particularly the odd, environmental jumble of 'Shadow
Moving', which sounds rather like Ikue Mori's laptop abstractions. By
the time you get to pieces like 'Piano' and the 'Oven' you'll be wondering
how this ever fit into the Bo Weavil roster. If anything, Berning's
music has far more in common with the lavish digital productions of
the 12k crowd. In fact, there are several notable electronic artists
you could compare Berning's work to: caked in vinyl crackle, 'Swimming'
and 'Beat' bring to mind Janek Schaefer's turntable experiments, while
the music box manipulations of 'Keyhole' evoke Colleen's Les Boites
A Musique. The previously unreleased works that round the disc off are
every bit as good. There are four more pieces associated with the work
of Hiraki Sawa's (including the especially gorgeous eight-minuter 'Cloud')
and one further composition, lifted from Stephane Caw's Flock soundtrack.
Lovely.
De:Bug
Auch wenn Dale Bernings kleine Klanginstallations-Miniaturen
vielleicht im Ansatz ein wenig zu digital sind, sprich mit einem Quentchen
zu viel Geräuschtapete verwässert sind, machen die kurzen Tracks doch
viel Spaß. Der Südafrikaner mit Wohnsitz London versammelt auf dieser
CD Tracks für den Filmemacher Hiraki Sawa, die es letztes Jahr bereits
auf Vinyl gab. Nun also die Reissue auf dem neuen, tollen japanischen
Label Flau und fünf Bonustracks gibt es obendrein. Eigentlich geht es
um Loops, kurze Versatzstücke, die einfach so aus dem Rechner kommen,
wenn man an etwas arbeitet. Kurze, schräg prozessierte Spieluhr-Melodien,
ein paar Field Recordings im Hintergrund und fertig ist ein Album, das
vielleicht wirklich am besten gemeinsam mit Bildern funktioniert, in
seiner verletzlichen Angreifbarkeit aber immer ein Staunen provoziert.
Smallfish
Originally released, if I’m not mistaken, as a vinyl album on
Bo’Weavil, this reissue on CD from Flau is absolutely spot on. I loved
this originally but it sold out really quickly and I didn’t get a lot
of time to spend with it and now I can enjoy it at my leisure – and
so can you. It’s a delicate series of tracks that use simple ideas and
melodies to create gorgeous ambient pieces. Ranging from pure organic
works through to a more minimalist, clicky style (a la 12k, you might
say) each piece is a self-contained world of melodic lushness with a
low-key feel. Hard to pick personal highlights as the whole thing flows
in a certain way that captures you the moment you start listening, but
I have to say that the more overtly electronic tracks are incredibly
appealing and, at times, there’s a hint of Steinbruchel-esque composition
to them that perfectly balances against the more musical tracks. Essentially
this is another beautiful release from Flau and props have to go to
Dale for a magical album. Highly recommended indeed.
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