minotaur shock - maritime
the mystery that is minotaur shock continues apace with his (ie mr david edwards to those that bump into him in the supermarket) first full length release on the big and mighty 4ad records. something which i believe is a personal goal of david, as i know he admired the label from afar throughout his formative years. luckily for followers of the shock groove, david has not strayed too far from his past releases which came out on the rather lovely melodic label. there is little evidence of any artful gothic stylings in the hand drawn cover image, and a complete lack of any of the usual 4ad college rock noise amongst these 11 aural pieces of pleasure. hurray.
so, to the contents.
the music is all instrumental, predominantly made with machines, though with a heavy presence of natural sounds, such as real proper acoustic guitars, clarinet, violins and suchlike. sometimes the melodies swing around the listener in an obvious, but lovely, fashion ('six foolish fishermen'). whereas, in other places things are a little more disjointed ('hilly'), but never in an unsettling manner that is often the case with this type of electronica based music. in recent times, minotaur shock has been moonlighting with sidekick artful pop combo 'bronze age fox', with whom he has even played live shows. the band are very good, (so where is the album ?) and i would like to think that these experiences, as well as the onset of fatherhood, has introduced a level of inner calm and understanding with the way that electronic music can work, and not be cold, or non-involving. as in several places, this album touches and caresses in ways that most laptop experimenters just cant manage. for example, the pleasant acoustic strum-a-long of track 7 ('somebody once told me ..'), is interrupted by a sublime vocal choral sample that just lifts the track out of the orbital like synthetics into something far more listenable and special. this combination of neo-classical styled fun is none more so obvious than on the opening track 'muesli', where the opening clarinet loops give a sense of philip glass styled drama, before being fleshed out with accordions and all manner of extra noises, all while maintaining the melodic core, making for a rather special 3 minutes. this is followed by perhaps one of the most bizarre sonic clashes i have heard in quite a while, '(she's in) dry dock now', where a subtle, cut up funked up bass line is kicked into touch by a splintered sample of a brass band - it shouldn't work, and damn on my first few listens it didn't, but once i had got over the initial shock (ha!), i came to realise that this is one of the most fascinating and wonderful tracks on an album chocka with such delights. someone get on the phone to alan titmarsh now, he has his new signature tune good to go here.
admittedly, a lot of this music is delicate, polite, and can be viewed as non-intrusive. don't expect to hear any of this album being played out across dance floors a la recent four tet noises (or even the recent minotaur shock dance remixes of bloc party !), instead david has crafted a set of musical pieces that dip into areas that the penguin orchestra have tried in the past (ie the combination of classical music structures with a twist of pop music), but, i would like to think that the minotaur shock sound will reach out further as this is inclusive music, it wants to be loved by the many as opposed to being appreciated by the few.
maritime ? nah, all the bloody time mate.