Article
Lucy

Albums
Alphabets Heaven
AREA C
Aidan Baker
Black Devil Disco Club
Cluster
Dakota Suite & Errante
Davis & Machinefabriek
Deaf Center
Fancy Mike
FM3
Forest Swords
Frivolous
Hakobune
Kyo Ichinose
Juv
Deniz Kurtel
Sven Laux
Lucy
Stephan Mathieu
Joel Mull
Near The Parenthesis
Netherworld
nunu
Fabio Orsi
Penalune
Pleq
port-royal
Rainbow Arabia
Todd Reynolds
Roedelius
Rosenqvist and Scott
Steffi
Sublamp
SubtractiveLAD
Tapage

Compilations
Back and 4th
Future Disco Volume 4
SMM: Context
Tasogare: Live in Tokyo

EPs
Aardvarck & Kubus
Corrugated Tunnel
Debilos
Djamel
Tolga Fidan
Flowers and Sea Creatures
Anne Garner
Mike Jedlicka / Cloudburst
Mo 2 Meaux-2
Proximity One: Remixes
Darren Rice
Sepalcure
Sharma + Krause
Josh T
Talvihorros
Francesco Tristano
Widesky
Dez Williams

Dag Rosenqvist and Simon Scott: Conformists
Low Point

A listener coming to this collaboration between Dag Rosenqvist (aka Jasper TX) and Simon Scott without any background information might expect to be met with a fiery showdown between two heavy-hitting guitar experimentalists. But such expectations would be met with disappointment as the duo instead move in the exact opposite direction. They do so for perfectly legitimate reasons, however, as Conformists isn't a pure summit meeting between the two but a soundtrack album for a short film of the same name the two collaborated on. The album's forty minutes are evenly split between two sides of a limited-edition white vinyl album, and as a result the album's ten songs naturally organize themselves into two side-long suites. Film-maker Juriaan Booij initially pitched the idea to Rosenqvist who, armed with only a simple story outline and basic storyboard drawings, contacted Scott about the idea of collaborating on the project. A period of long-distance file sharing ensued until the album's ten pieces reached their final form (that the album is designed to stand alone separately from the film is borne out by the fact that the film is a mere twenty minutes in length—half the length of the album).

And how does it sound? It's understated, restrained, atmospheric, and evocative—heavily cinematic, in other words. An image of a depopulated city of worn-out factories and buildings coated in grey dusk is suggested by the material (in that regard the pastoral album cover photo proves misleading). “He Left the City Broken” slowly comes into focus with whistling tones drifting hazily into position and ever so imperceptibly swelling in size as washes and ripples appear before fading away to let “Failing Lights” take over. Once again, the duo opt for atmospheric mood painting of a low-level kind, an approach that will be applied to the project as a whole, despite occasional moments where the marked contrasts in volume and activity surface (“Dialogue,” with its neon-lit bursts, a case in point). At the close of side one, storm-tossed elements gather along the horizon, accompanied by murmuring voices, before the No Pussyfooting ambient stylings of side two emerge and grow into a prickly field of convulsions and static. The second side's material exudes a stronger industrial flavour, and the ambient-drones are a tad darker in tone than the settings on side one. Despite the understated approach Rosenqvist and Scott bring to the project, there's no doubt that they're kindred spirits with a shared vision for the project, and track titles such as “Ghosts” and “And I Will Quietly Go (Into This Night)” (an obvious twist on Dylan Thomas's well-known poem) clearly speak to the material's spectral nature.

March 2011