Strange Dreams

Strange Dreams

Album review

Album: Strange Dreams

Artists: Motte

Some time back there was a memorable performance in my hometown; someone was using loops to construct a soundscape of weird vocals. I can’t remember the name of the group, but I do remember the Hitchcockian scene as the loud repetitive squawking attracted an agitated flock of seabirds. I couldn’t figure out then how they were doing it. There was no tape deck or Walkman to be seen. It was all coming from a small metal box: an effects pedal. It really highlighted the limitations of our crude cassette hacks. Speak into box; hit the button, and sound gets played back eternally, or until the battery runs out. They had control. They had the technology. But now everybody has immediate access to it. You buy it off a shelf. You buy it online. And now it’s fucking everywhere. 

Australian musician Mick Turner, the guitarist from the noisy trio the Dirty Three and formerly of the excellent band Venom P. Stinger, performed in Dunedin recently. Great unhinged guitarist. Massive expectations. Made the journey out to Port Chalmers. Spent an evening watching a guy jam along to his loop pedal. Did he not trust someone enough to play the basic rhythm parts? Is it an economic way to travel? Sure, on a recording you may not notice the absence of a musician, but on stage there’s a virtual rock ‘n’ roll three piece with only two fleshy members! He did have the decency to perform with a real life drummer. It seems such an uncreative use of technology (especially in the context of improvised rock). Fight automation dear comrades!

But occasionally someone comes along with a loop pedal and completely floors you. Evelyn Morris (aka Pikelet) has been touring through Aotearoa pretty much every summer for the last few years. Morris uses vocals, keyboards, drum machines and acoustic percussion to create vast songscapes. In these hands, or feet, the loop pedal is an assembling agent and an organising tool. The music still maintains its organic roots even though it’s largely digitised by the time it’s received by your body. It’s wonderful. It’s generous but not overdressed. It’s full of love and hate. But mostly love. 

Anyway, this was going to be a review of another god awful song sent into the Critic office by some man apologising to somebody through a distracting mist of looped vocal noises, ranging from woo to ooo to ahhh to oomshooshtika, that has been produced by some other famous guy. He’s apparently performing in Dunedin soon so keep your schedule full and inflexible. This negative transmission has been interrupted. Please do not adjust that dial. 

A few weeks ago I was listening to a radio show broadcast straight outta Hobart called ‘What I Say’. It’s programmed by Ben, who has exposed me to a lot of excellent music. One of the songs on this particular show was performed by the artist Motte. Turns out Motte, or Anita Clark, is based in Christchurch and has a new album called ‘Strange Dreams’, which just come out on CocoMuseReleases (which is shaping up to be another great local record label). 

Last night I got my hands on a copy of ‘Strange Dreams’ by Motte and it’s wonderful. Six tracks of layered violin peppered with occasional light and no nonsense vocal melodies. There is some exceptional synth accompaniment provided by Indira Force on here. It’s an ominous whip cracking in the distance. At first I didn’t associate the low frequency bass modulations in ‘Give It To Me’ with the record. I mistook it for the rise and fall of an engine’s pitch in peak hour traffic. It’s a familiar breath in these parts of Caversham. It’s great when a record opens these valves of awareness. It’s a rare quality. The music is truly affecting. It’s lovingly suffocating. It’s like walking through a dense fog, or driving in the rain, lost in the glow of rear tail lights. 

It was the track ‘Bathhouse’ that got me thinking about the loop thing. How the different layers of strings fall and cascade over each other. If this is a looping technique it has been employed naturally, intuitively, in the short passages of plucked violin strings. Maybe it’s hard to think, in these days of technological dependence or cynical suspicion of it, that these could be played individually as unique segments. After all, Clark’s playing is remarkable. There is no reason to doubt it. The bedrock of the title track ‘Strange Dreams’ is undeniably a regular loop. But by what means is this generated? There is nostalgia to it. I could be imagining it. I swear there is a familiar grind. It’s something mechanical. Something hand-made. 

Magnetic.

This article first appeared in Issue 5, 2017.
Posted 1:27pm Sunday 26th March 2017 by Reg Norris.