| REVIEWS
Vital Weekly
In Vital Weekly 380 we discussed Andrew Liles' second CD 'Aural
Anagram', but that was a more recent CD than this 'All Closed Doors',
which was delayed for reasons unknown. Liles is from the UK, from
Brighton to be precise and has been around for a great number of
years, but so far without much luck for getting his name around.
Which is sad, because his music might appeal to some people with
a love for dark, but surreal music, say the areas of Nurse With
Wound. Liles operates on his own in a more electronic than good
ol Nurse With Wound. Synths and sound effects play a big role in
his music, but his input consists also of samples from voices, piano's,
orchestras or sounding objects. In a bed of ambient related drone
musics, Liles paints his surreal landscapes, with children voices
singing 'que sera' or the sound of doors opened (or closed). Less
thematic than 'Aural Anagram' and therefore a little bit more scattered
and fragmented and at times not entirely focused. Maybe I heard
this material too often, seeing him a couple of times live. But
in case you haven't, this might be a very worthwhile CD to have,
certainly if the dark alley is yours anyway. FdW
ear-rational.com
"The sound design on this album is perfect.The last song has
the sound of walking and doors closing. It is fascinating. There
is a lot more to it, though, than just doors. My favorite parts
on this CD are the voices, what they say and how they are effected.
A male voice asks why you let him down. A child speaks of their
dreams. Mouse tittering electronics whirl around in structured patterns,
a piano fades into the past. A violin loops into water. The wind
howls to you in a Hafler manner. The music is best thought of in
the terms of 'experimental,' but not in a noise sense. This could
be a distant cousin to the energetic non-silly NWW albums. Any fan
of different music should check this out, it really is perfection.
- Don Poe
Baby Art
...dropping thru my letter box today comes a tasty cd from mr andrew
liles - all closed doors - another nicely presented selection of
interconnected finely crafted aural landscapes ...generally isolated
and barren (and inner?) ones but beautiful nevertheless - Trevor
Brown http://www.pileup.com/babyart/
Brainwashed
The art of the sound collage and drone music has a group of key
members. Mirror, Christoph Heemann, Andrew Chalk, William Basinski,
and perhaps just a few more are known and loved and create music
that invokes images from other worlds; be those images frightening,
sublime, or esoteric, it is impossible to deny their visceral impact.
Andrew Liles has been added to that list of elusive and wonderful
musicians with this release. From the first moment All Closed Doors
submerges me into a universe I'm unfamiliar with and perhaps slightly
scared of. Furniture drifts through the air, children laugh and
disappear down long hallways, shadows scream and laugh at each other
when there is nothing to cast them, and the echo of something ancient
pours down over me in the form of a vacant sky. The impact of Liles'
sound worlds on this disc is unavoidable, his imaginative and spectral
cadences whisper and glide through the air in ways that effect the
brain; scary stories are told without the aid of a voice, heaven
spills over from the speakers into the room even though such a thing
is unthinkable. There's a strange light that bounces and reflects
off of everything in this world; there are oceans of singing fish
and mountains bellowing their hate onto the helpless below. I can't
stop coming up with images, it's as if my mind is flooded with an
invisible light that forces it into overdrive, into a creative process
that can't stop, that wouldn't stop if the album didn't end. Very
rarely do I find an album so immediate and compelling as this; I
often have butterflies while listening to it. It is perhaps the
equivalent of a sexual release extended over fifty minutes of sound.
None of the overtly sexual material from Liles' Aural Anagram/Anal
Aura Gram is here, but there's that mysterious and ancient something
looming over the whole of this release. It's a tension that can't
be avoided, a physical tension created in the presence of an erotic
and secretive resonance. - Lucas Schleicher http://www.brainwashed.com
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