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REVIEWS
THE
WIRE
Aptly subtitled "A Concerto For Piano And Reverberation
In Four Movements", The Dying Submariner is a hypnotically simple
album from occasional Nurse With Wound collaborator Andrew Liles. While
there is no spoken narrative, the sequence of events is perfectly clear:
the nautical protagonist finds his bathysphere cast free from its tether
to the surface world, and eventually plunges into the ocean's depths.
Liles guides this grim tale through numerous different moods, using polyphonous
tone clusters and arpeggiated hammerings to connote the shift from dreamy
weightlessness into noirish tension, slowly pushing towards a forbidding
chill. The final piano notes of the album emerge from cavernous reverb
and leaden sustain, both curiously playful and drunkenly stumbling - a
comedic twist of fate for the luckless submariner, or his final thoughts
flashing before his eyes as he nears his demise? Jim Haynes
BRAINWASHED
Written by Lucas Schleicher
Monday, 31 July 2006
Andrew Liles continues to take the familiar and turn it into something
warped, something weird. Now, however, he's doing it in a perhaps unexpected
way. Concertos normally have three movements and are typically composed
for a solo instrument and an orchestra; the piano is the only proper instrument
on this record. Liles, however, makes sense of it all plays the piano
in a way that has me looking at the instrument in a whole new light.
A dying submariner, lost in some dismal cinema of murky water, frightening
aquatic life, and the weight of death literally on his shoulders is all
the artwork for this release sugggests to me. The blind eyes, exposed
teeth, and pale complexion on the cover are supposed to say a little something
about the dive suit seen inside the packaging. When those first hidden
piano notes begin to rumble like a monster rising from the depths, it
is easy to think that the rest of this album is going to be a dark ride,
the first and last adventure of someone who is unaware of the danger lurking
below.
The Dying Submariner..., however, reminds me more of a classical fantasia,
a whimsical adventure worthy of far more color and infused with a life
equally as complex as the zoology of creatures suggested by the artwork.
There are minor chords struck by Liles' piano playing, but there is also
a flurry of activity that skips about in the music, very noticeable in
the closing moments of the first movement and readily apparent at other
times in each of the other pieces. This could be contributed to how naked
much of Liles' performance is. While there is no orchestra to make this
a concerto proper, the reverb of the title does add a sense of accompaniment.
By itself, however, is Liles' beautiful writing and performance, standing
above the simple reverb and feeding off of it simultaneously: eloquent
and poetic at times, it conjures a sense of depth and emotional content,
and then harsh and invigorating other times with the full range of fear,
anger, and confusion instilled in Liles' heavy handed strikes and melancholic
strokes.
Each track brings a different thrill despite the monochromatic possibilities
inherent in arranging for a single instrument and effect. Liles makes
beautiful use of the piano's voice, letting it ring out and sing in a
way that reminds of Claude Debussy's work at times. Despite the crushing
weight of the water, of depression, of doubt, there is a sense of hope
and happiness in the way the instrument is played upon. There can be no
doubt of the darkness surrounding this piece, however. So, at other times,
Liles exposes the instrument as a rotten beast, coughing and hacking into
tunnels so deep and dangerous that man hasn't dared to touch their mysteries.
Liles continues to outdo himself over and over again. I know he's played
with Nurse with Wound, but comparisons between him and Steven Stapleton
make as much as sense as comparisons between Salvador Dalí and
Georges Bataille do (that is to say that comparison is becoming null and
void, the result of a genre's name moreso than a result of any musical
similarity). Liles voice continues to grow more unique and more diverse
with time. This album should not be missed.
MUSIQUE
MACHINE
The Dying Submariner enchantingly submerges the listener in underwater
landscapes, that drifting with dead bodies, and lost ships. But also of
mystical cities of coral and pearl in the deeperist cannons of the sea,
never before seen by human eyes.
Andrew Liles has managed to cokes from his piano and echo effects, such
exquisite and often darkly rimed ambient tones. Though out the four tracks
he drifts from almost blinding beauty to octopus ink dark tones. Using
what may seem such a simple thing as piano to paint such, a level of audio
detail, it really is a celebration of the pianos many voices, and of course
Mr Liles apt ear for rich sound weaving. Part one finds a man in an copper
driving suit twisting over and over falling though, dark choppy seas,
is frame just twisting and twisting, we keep glancing his paniced face
through, his glass viewing portal, Liles stretch out deep tones from the
piano. As the track goes on the tone seem to lighten, or possible it’s
just acceptance of the driver to his inevitable death. All of the tracks
have similar feeling, but there is variation as Liles experiments with
the tones, making each track into its own drifting sound tale.
A rewarding and lush watery sound treat. As usual with Beta-lactam ring
records releases, the artwork is wonderfully. A sturdy cardboard gate
fold, with a bizarre picture of a deep sea fish on the cover, it’s
blind eyes starting out at you, and inside a eerier shot of a driver been
swallowed up by darkness. Roger Batty
SMOTHER
MAGAZINE
Dark foreboding ambience that twists knives deep into your cortex
with wraith-like disgust, “The Dying Submariner” is a twist
conceptual nightmare of slowed down agony. Layering faint sounds onto
chilling experimental surreal firestorms, Andrew Liles knows that music
filled with this much dread not only tingles spines but chills them with
fierce abandon. Psychologically a bit of an undertaking when listened
to in complete darkness, the album fills your head with disturbing images
as you let your mind wander in the droning collage of sonic textures and
elongated sound waves. Beautiful, frightening, eerie, intelligent: all
of these adjectives and so much more sum up the truly disheartening experience
of listening to this album. And I love it! - J-Sin
MORPHEUS
MUSIC
Subtitled - A Concerto for Piano and Reverberation in Four Movements
- this CD is self-descriptive. Ominous drones, muted and dark open the
album, turning in slow turbulence, rumbling with depth - initially minimal
in melodic structure, but increasingly harmonious as the piano origins
of the sounds gradually become increasingly apparent. The Dying Submariner
is not a comfortable composition though, almost as soon as musical clarity
is established Liles introduces strongly dissonant notes, disrupting the
harmony. At times reverberation is all encompassing, thunderous in places
or a thick sonic smog in others. Emergent piano tones run the full range
of the keyboard from simple, bold low tolls to tinkling complexity and
rippling scales - at times almost free of the ambience of echoes, then
once again enshrouded in a blanket of softening sustain.
This appealing package is presented in the fashion of vinyl LPs from a
few decades back. A card gatefold opens out to reveal a double panel image
of a deep sea diver emerging from green murk - no plastic CD holder to
mar the effect. The disc in fact is pocketed in the card sleeve and protected
in a plastic wallet. The front cover image of a fish pulled from the ocean
depths - dead and eyes and crinkling, transparent skin afloat on an infinity
of blackness - hints at the musical tone often explored on the CD. Text
is minimal providing little more than contact and label details - a track
list appearing only on the disc itself.
Andrew Liles has built up a substantial body of work since the mid 1980s
and has collaborated with numerous other artists. Here he presents here
a powerful, experimental composition that explores obscure liquid aural
bodies of sound and the imaginary contents of such; tenebrous, amorphous,
neo-classical, like nothing you've ever heard. The Dying Submariner is
released on Beta-Lactam Ring Records and will appeal primarily to fans
of dark ambient music looking for something different.
PROGRESSIVE
& PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC
Although this is a release without words, I can easily imagine a small
story with the music.The first movement starts as a dark soundtrack, as
if from the deep (sea), with slow bass sounds (which are stretched piano
sounds I guess) penetrating into wider spaces, mixed with its overtones.
This sounds still like a composition, which is almost like electronic
music but without using electronic keyboards or equipment. In its evolution
it starts to give the impression of a ghost piano concerto in a sunken
ship, unreachable for real contact, but not for a listener, who might
be afraid this could work as sounds from evil elks seeking a new victim
to drawn them, to share their doomed destiny. After another clearer (underwater)
pianopiece, the third part sound more like drunk and drown, also in the
nature of its composition, where the echoing layers and oscillations are
a bit destroying the composition ship, showing a more destructive than
a constructive nature. After a while it becomes a bit into a sleepy moodiness,
keeping the piano piece melodic layers close to the hillocky ground level
of the sea. The latest, quietest piano piece with some echoes is just
like a calmed down nature of the wreck itself which is no longer making
up any new story. Never the less in the end of this piece, a slightly
dancing piano melody ends the whole composition, just like friendly moss
or plants on top of the wreck.. So in the end the story still did find
a surprising concluding turning point which is pleasant like a waving
hand, calmly pulsating on the deeper waves and water movements, life after
death.
FAKE
JAZZ
What is the enduring draw in music about sinking ships? Gavin
Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic, Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste,
and the Shipwreck Radio series. And now Andrew Liles' new work The Dying
Submariner. Perhaps it’s a fascination with the land mammal's return
to the primordial soup that drowning in a cold unforgiving sea symbolizes.
Perhaps it’s a socioeconomic statement about the inevitable demise
of the "ship of state." Or maybe it’s the appropriateness
of a burial at sea as a modern compositional twist on that old genre warhorse
the funeral mass. Whatever it is, the "sinking ship" genre appears
unsinkable.
That being said, The Dying Submariner is hardly a rehash of the existing
canon. While it is likely to earn comparisons to the earlier entries mentioned
above, there's a crucial difference here. While Bryars focused on a famous
catastrophe affecting hundreds of lives, Liles' subject is so anonymous
he is known only by his occupation. And even though the genre demands
slow evolution and repetition of themes, the NWW entries are more eerily
creepy than somber. And let's face it, while it's also kind of creepy,
not much is more somber than contemplating dying alone at the bottom of
the ocean. It practically defines somber.
This is deep water music. Even the cover is adorned by the sort of hideously
deformed bulging eyeballed, razor fanged fishes that only live at depths
where the atmospheric pressure is an order of magnitude greater than that
on the surface of the earth. The sounds that comprise The Dying Submariner’s
four part concerto will be immediately familiar to anyone who ever put
a brick on the sustain pedal of their grandparents' piano to create enough
mobility to go nuts on the leftmost keys. Part I balances between unearthly
bass rumblings and reverberant sheets of the fleeting sonic afterimage
of a descending melody, the piece flutters steadily downward away from
the light of the surface; the audio equivalent of the submarine’s
weak headlamp growing dimmer as it plunges further into the abyss. Did
I mention this was somber?
Part II offers some brief respite from the inexorable spiral in the form
of a slowly coalescing chord sequence that ends up sounding more like
the intro to a Mogwai post-rock opus than the grim farewell that preceded
it. Maybe this is the point where the submariner is tempted to swim “towards
the light”, but if so, the branch of hope that is extended is short-lived
because the claustrophobia returns in the tightly wound cascading arpeggios
of Part III. Part IV is clearly the point where our hero bites it. Its
spare, lingering notes are easily the most funereal of the whole disc.
This is not one of those records I’m going to pull out to listen
to again that often. Even the admittedly subtle musical variations on
the basic theme Liles presents early on are not likely to make me brave
the intensity and frankly depressing prospect of such a death documented
over an hour plus. But there are definitely moments of fragile beauty
here as well as a compelling (if morbid) narrative and those willing to
travel to the depths with Liles and his submariner may find the trip worthwhile.
FISHCOM
COLLECTIVE
Subtitled (appropriately) “A Concerto for Piano and Reverberation
in Four Movements,” Lile’s “Dying Submariner”
is a masterful, absorbing and thoroughly meditative (not to mention emotional
on a tenebrous, deep, profound level, if you can imagine that) work. Using
the piano to create ultra-moody atmosphere and virtual audio darkness,
Lile’s sometimes utilizes instantly recognizable piano strokes that
move with intent deliberation, slow but certain. At other times, the music
is elongated into ambient miasmas that are not readily identifiable as
piano, though in hindsight you can see how the pressure on a piano key
was manipulated to such a point. Liles’ work is not just aptly subtitled
but aptly titled, as well, providing a dark journey into alien places
at the bottom of the world.
TERRASCOPE
ON LINE
Experimental musician/sound artist Andrew Liles has a long history as
a collaborator with the likes of Steven Stapleton, The Hafler Trio, and
Daniel Padden, but here he conjures a bathyspheric solo work from the
elements of piano and reverberation. In fact, the release is subtitled
'A Concerto for Piano and Reverberation in Four Movements', though I always
understood a concerto to have three movements and be for a solo instrument
and orchestra of some kind. Pedantry aside, it's a concerto in spirit,
with the core elements of piano forming the solo part, and reverberation
the orchestration.
From its outset, it is clear that Liles needs no words to establish narrative:
the listener is instantly under the waves, experiencing the deep, muffled
wavelengths of sound through water. A world of fear and mystery is evoked,
and it's a dark, cold place that is barely aware of humanity, let alone
welcoming of it. Occasional shafts of light penetrate, through differently
shaded tone-clusters and subtle arpeggios, but the direction is overwhelmingly
toward Neptune's darkness, and His throne of sodden drones. Liles uses
the piano is ways that are rarely heard, and had one not known the genesis
of the sounds here, electronics would have been assumed. The end of the
first movement is extraordinary, with carillon crescendos suggesting ascent,
fighting against the downward pull of deep bass reverberations. At times
it's as if Liles is tearing out piano-strings by the fistful. Despite
the potential for such releases to be one-dimensional, Liles creates distinct
variations between the movements. The second movement is more clearly
piano-generated, solemn chords and hesitant counterpoints suggesting a
troubled internal dialogue. In narrative terms, it's easy to imagine the
submariner bargaining for his life as the clock runs down. Halfway through
the movement, the tempo and tonality change, and caverns of light are
suggested as if a reprieve has been granted, or at least hoped for. It's
a beautiful, weightless sequence that balances the foreboding elsewhere.
Delirium perhaps. Lightness and eloquence characterise the start of the
third movement; ghost arpeggios echoing along a tunnel of light indicating
perhaps that our imagined protagonist has began to cross over into death.
But the pitch increases through the movement in an odd and unsettling
way, and the overall mood suggested by its middle section is the anxiety
of a soul trapped between two states of being, before some kind of resolution
takes place in the final third. The fourth movement returns initially
to doom-chords and flashes of light of the second movement, almost as
though the overall work has transitioned from being about a submariner
to being about the sea that swallows all, and especially about the life
of its unknowable trenches and rifts. A constantly shifting series of
tone clusters and reverberations then follows, across the spectrum of
hearing from depth charges of bass to shimmering neutrino particle accelerations
of high frequency. Oddly, a stumbling jazz pattern finishes it all off,
suggesting maybe a cosmic joke is being played on the listener. It doesn't
quite work as a conclusion, but there is no denying the magnificent work
elsewhere. More varied than a pure drone work, but still minimalist in
execution, 'The Dying Submariner' stands as one of the most fully realised
experimental recording of recent years.
SLUG
MAGAZINE
Andrew Liles = Gavin Byers + Samuel Coleridge + Harold Budd
What happens when you add Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Iron Maiden
but hold the Maiden and insert underwater tableaux’s? What you don’t
get is your aquarium screen saver complete with sunken ship and incidental
fish noises. Andrew Liles, instead, has created a lurching moaning composition
that is equally frightening for its tight chilling style as it is for
its sustained notes. The Dying Submariner takes off where Maiden failed
(actually making a song about the Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner);
it shimmers and shakes, pitches and rolls as one part harmonizes with
another and echoes and reverbs off yet another pair or chord of notes.
You would think that with each track being 20 minutes (give or take a
minute) that it would bring on the boring but instead it is delicately
balanced enough to sustain interest the same way that staring at an aquarium
is alluring. While Coleridge did The Rime in seven parts Liles was able
to do it aurally in four! Boo Ya, Coleridge! – Erik Lopez
MIRGILUS
SICULORUM
Andrew
Liles egyike korunk millionyi kiserletezo underground muveszei kozul.
Andrew azert nem tegnap kezdte el a billentyuket nyomogatni, hiszen mar
a 80-as evekben is adott ki lemezeket, turnezott, stb. Az idok soran -
tobbek kozott - olyan neves muveszekkel kollaboralt, mint Edward Ka-Spel
(The Legendary Pink Dots), Steve Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), vagy Steven
Wilson (Bass Communion, Porcupine Tree). A huzos diszkografiaval rendelkezo
Andrew minden anyagan megprobal valami ujat, valami masat alkotni, ezuttal
sincs ez maskepp, a Haldoklo Tengeralattjaro egy 4 dalbol allo 72 perces
alkotas, a CD alcime pedig - A Concerto for Piano and Reverberation in
Four Moments - mar elarulhat egy par dolgot a koncepciorol. Termeszetesen
nem egy "live" felvetelrol van szo, viszont a hangszer, amin
elovan adva a "koncert", az mar a zongora. Nem kell persze teadelutanokon
eloadott klasszikus szonatakra gondolni, ez itt a feneketlen melysegek
es a tengeralattjarok zeneje, egy haldoklo buvar utolso pillanatainak
monoton megzenesitese. Andrew zeneje ezen a lemezen kizarolag zongoran
eloadott komor hangzatokbol, illetve ezeknek reverberacioibol all. A visszhangositott
temak toltik be a hatterszerepet, majd ezekre jatszik ra Andris tovabbi,
nem reverberalt zongoratemakat. Az eredmeny egy rendkivul nyomaszto, klausztrofobias
hangulatu zenefolyam. A szimplan part I - part IV - re keresztelt dalok
egybefolynak, a temak eszrevetlenul csusznak at egymasba, megtartva mindvegig
a disszonans, baratsagtalan jelleget. Bar az ambient-el rokon zene ez,
megsem neveznem annak, talan az experimentalis kortars zenekhez all kozelebb
Mr. Liles produkcioja. Bar ismerek nehany regebbi AL kiadvanyt, engem
is meglepett az uj lemez komorsaga, ridegsege, hiszen Andrew-nak vannak
ettol sokkal baratsagosabb hangvetelu anyagai is. Ha esetleg bejonne a
The Dying Submariner, akkor probalkozz meg a specialis 2 CD-s verzioval
is, amely tartalmaz egy The Dead Submariner nevu korongot is. - Robert
Sun
TOUCHING
EXTREMES
Andrew Liles pumps out CDs by the dozen and it's just obvious that I am
not able to keep his pace, that's why I listened to "The dying submariner"
- subtitled "A concerto for piano and reverberation" - with
a lot of delay (no pun intended). It's one of those cases in which I bought
the CD out of the many positive reviews I read, and let it be known that
they were right. The composition is divided into four movements, more
or less similar as a general concept but slightly different as far as
little nuances and colours are concerned. The activity is mostly centred
around the low-frequency range of the piano at first, then the nebulous
figurations and long-distance echoes elicited by Liles' hands shift all
over the keyboard in grey-tinged snapshots of solitude, at times sounding
more like a silent movie soundtrack than a marine landscape. The sea is
nevertheless evoked, thanks to hundreds of overlapping chords which -
in the haze generated by the infinite reverbs - mesh and gently clash,
giving birth to even more extraneous shades, all of them perfectly acceptable
to these ears, which every once in a while need a little relief after
hours upon hours of relentless attacks (and not always by good musicians).
Only at the end of the album the piano morphs into a metallic entity,
then Liles closes the show with uncertain muffled articulations that look
like a signature of sorts. Another considerable effort by this talented
artist. - Massimo Ricci
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