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REVIEWS
Side-Line
Released back in 2001, this album by soundscape constructivist Andrew
Liles only reached us now. It's the first recording of 4 by Liles.
Coming up are 10 X 10"s on the UK label Macrophonies of "Love
song", followed by "All closed doors" on his US label
Infraction and "Aural Anagram" on Macrophonies. On this
first output Liles mixes both minimal strings with soundscapes that
range from sampled rain (which reminds me of the cracking of a record)
to voices down the hall. Extremely minimalistic sadness compiled
into 14 tracks. Material that will please the instrumental Coil
adepts and will leave the other ones numb. This is audio material
for the trained ear only.
Unknown Origin
"...this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no
foolin' around..." Talking Heads, from Fear Of Music
This ain't no fooling around, indeed! Infraction Records' second
disk is the debut of Andrew Liles, an Englishman who has brought
back notice of another world to our ears, an un world. Thin and
wispy, disturbing and dissonant, the music Liles has recorded sketches
out a multitude of unearthly visions, all heavily processed, eerie
and electronic but avoiding all clichés to date. This is
original, surprising music and is not the least bit derivative,
at least to my ears. The disk starts with a jarring intro that could
easily come from the soundtrack of an ax murder with you as the
surprised guest. Surprise! Then, the music skates between lush analog
and harsh digital confetti to find a home on the borderland of smooth
and fractured sounds. Two note loops provide the sole backdrop on
several cuts while electronic voices and samples pop up elsewhere,
including either harshly processed rain or frying, I can't tell
which. Voices speak and we feel their urgency but we can't understand
them. Noises, tones and voices come and go. The main operative word,
my primary reaction, is summed up by the word "eerie"
with enough "disturbing" added to the mix which keeps
this well away from the term "new age". No, this is mature,
adult music so put the kiddies to bed. And this is not sleepy music,
this demands attention on almost every other cut but rewards attention
on all of them. This is the sort of disk you might not "like"
right away but find yourself playing again and again. Liles has
brewed some primordial stuff here that some will need badly in this
mediocre age. I don't recommend headphones on your first listen
but I do recommend a listen. Liles has said a lot here with, I understand,
more to come. Just be careful with that ax, Andrew.
Vital Weekly
Recording since the mid 80s, having released many CDRs, paid finally
off in releasing a real CD in 2001. Andrew Liles works with environmental
sounds, processed through sampling and computers. He does this in
a very subtle way. Short samples of instruments are set against
long environmental recordings, but it's hard to define what these
recordings are. It's not really important. Liles plays his stuff
at a most modest level, but it's filled with rich textures, played
with great detail. In general his music is more ambient then musique
concrete, certainly towards the end of the CD when ringing tones
take over. The electronics used are mostly sine waves, but they
too act on a low level. Liles plays unearthly music, using very
down to earth sounds. He takes his inspiration as much from The
Hafler Trio then of any electronic minimalist, like Oliverios or
Radigue. Maybe too ambient to be in the same group of people as
Gunther or Meelkop, but certainly too experimental for any downright
ambientheads.
All Music Guide
Andrew Liles offers little hope or joy on his meticulously crafted
album An Un World. Over the course of 14 tracks comprised of various
sound sources tweaked into dark ambient soundscapes, the producer
carries you through an often fantastic, sometimes frightening world
of sound, characterized by its tone more than its individual components.
Every song features its own unique palette of sounds. For example,
indecipherable voices murmur beneath a haunting wind-like buzz on
"Over Before It Began," and a locked-groove piano record
loops infinitely beneath a hushed monsoon of rain-like static on
the title track. Just as the album comes to a calm yet harrowing
close, "Left Behind" lumbers on for over 13 minutes, carried
along by ghostly ambient tones that waver slightly and seem somehow
natural, in an otherworldly kind of way. It's a truly disquieting
epic that summarizes the tone of this album more than any other
song here. The fact that it lumbers on and on only confirms its
haunting quality and, in a way, brings An Un World to a fitting
conclusion. Such wonderfully dreary music obviously isn't intended
for the masses, but taken for what it is, Liles' work here continually
startles you, both with its hushed subtlety and psychological effect.
- Jason Birchmeier
Rective
Andrew Liles has been making his own particular brand of vertiginous,
disturbing and disjointed music since the mid eighties. Already
with a whole library of CDR releases to his name, Liles has emerged
from the London experimental scene as both an inventive and forceful
presence and a purveyor of some of the most surreally mournful and
otherwordly music you are ever likely to hear.
His first non-CDR release, An Un World (Infraction 2001) opens with
'Anything, Everything, Nothing' immediately swallowing the listener
in layers of hypnotic tones and electronic chattering; buried voices
slowed to a crawl, unexpected crescendos hit like meteorites then
fall away to nothingness. 'Where?' paints a bleak, alien soundscape
of stretched chimes and drowning violin and is followed by the brittle
crackling of an ancient gramophone and the lost strains of forgotten
music in 'No Ending - No Beginning'; all the while discontented
murmurings and distant collisions bubble beneath. "This is
your life, your pathetic life..." drawls the opening of 'Over
Before It Began' an electronically shredded vocal stuttering as
the waves of tones and stolen snippets of music flutter effortlessly
in and out of the mix. This record is the sound of the cavernous
emptiness which exists, tardis-like, inside us all, the immeasurable
gap between hope and failure; a magnificent symphony of sadness
and stifled dreams. 'Nocturne' is a dark and rainy night in purgatory,
while the first of two untitled pieces on the album strikes out
against the soporific drones with sparks and pulses of malfunction.
The title track consists chiefly of the sound of a stuck record,
a strangely touching looped piano refrain going nowhere, ad infinitum...
A kind of serenity of loneliness is reached with 'Left Behind' as
the lamenting tones drift across one another, intermittently coalescing
into beautiful waves of sound. 'Won't Nowhere' is a single, unsettling
loop sampled from WW2 standard 'We'll Meet Again'; the album comes
to an end with a reprise of the title track 'An Unworld (outro)'.
A definite stand-out among much of the soundalike dross of the electronic
ambient and avant garde world, An Un World is a more than promising
first release from an accomplished and affecting sound artiste.
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