Given you Nothing
Given you Nothing
表演者: FILM
专辑类型: 选集
介质: CD
发行时间: 2004-12-27
唱片数: 1
出版者: Film
专辑简介
Tomlab is on a roll. First The Books album Thought for Food turned my head all the way around, and now I've been drawn deep into the world of Flim. Dresden resident Enrico Wuttke is the man behind the name. According to the sleeve notes, he recorded tracks for this, his debut album, between 1993 and 2001. That's a hell of a long time to complete 11 tracks totaling 35 minutes, but when the assembled record sounds this good, I call it eight years well spent.
It seems right that this short, modest record took so long to put together because everything about Given You Nothing seems patient. In a world of ADD channel surfing, Flim calmly stays the course and lets slight variations in melody and tone do the work. Because the foundation is so simple, these tracks require a certain amount of faith on the part of the listener. You have to hear the quiet, whispered suggestions a few times to realize how much they're telling you.
My first listen to the album and the opening track "Hell" was unnerving. Somewhere in my subconscious, I've grown to expect certain sounds when I give an initial listen to an electronic release, and "Hell" delivered none of them. For the track's two-minute length, the dominant sound is piano, an achingly slow left hand vamp combined with concise melodic variations using four or five notes. Far in the distance is a barely heard synthesizer drone, adding the smallest digital flavoring to the pristine keyboard sound. It was fresh and oddly emotional, despite how little seemed to be happening. The following "Plural," which picks up the pace but still builds around a left hand riff, reminded me of Vert's stunning interpretation of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert in its contrast of perhaps the most well-known sound in Western music (the acoustic keyboard) with precise, detailed accents of processed noise.
The sounds laid down in those first two tracks set the tone for the album. Wuttke has a piano, a synthesizer with a button or two, and a drum machine he busts out when he's in the mood, and he doesn't need much else. Unusually, the piano is the main instrument throughout Given You Nothing. I referenced Vert's Koln Konzert above and that comparison applies at various points throughout this album. That said, Wuttke is not improvising and Flim is nowhere near jazz. The similarity enters from his impressionist, introspective tone and pacing, and his delicate melodies.
The Tomlab website says that Given You Nothing owes something to Talk Talk's Laughing Stock. This comparison seemed strange to me so I gave the album a careful listen for clues. I discovered that "Linker2" does in fact share a tone and deep, punishing drum beat with Laughing Stock's "Ascension Day," but I still think the connection is overstated. Much of Given You Nothing has a light, childlike cast. "My Czesko Guitar" and "April" sound a lot like the vulnerable innocence of Nobukazu Takemura collaborator Aki Tsuyuko, where you almost cringe at how open and defenseless the music sounds.
The single word that comes to mind with Flim is "refreshing." It's nice to hear an album that uses the tools of the computer age while completely retaining its musicality. Good, simple tunes and the unsteady rhythm of an actual human being make Given You Nothing a record with a lot of heart.
— Mark Richard-San, August 7, 2002
曲目
1 Hell 2:11 X
2 Plural 4:31 X
3 Linker 3:35 X
4 April 3:05 X
5 My Czesko Guitar 3:04 X
6 Linker2 7:21 X
7 This Is A Lush Life 3:23 X
8 Am Rande Gesehen 2:33 X
9 Paspell Unten 3:00 X
10 The Crass 6:06 X
11 Given You Nothing