I’ve been enjoying Experimedia’s grandiose vinyl submissions to this column for years, and I think this Jannick Schou LP is my favorite of the lot. It’s like a rainstorm amid a slightly (just enough to throw you off if you think you’re gonna start that body-movin’) off-kilter techno template, constant percussion nipping the drone bug in the bud and carrying the action from segue to segue. And this IS an ambient-drone artist, just one that understands the way the wind blows. It’s time to start organizing these roaming drones into manageable rows and columns; don’t worry, you won’t lose any of your artistic independence, you’ll just gain a ton of leverage when you pile your comet-showers overtop a rhythm that can lend them new life. Fabrik, perhaps, actually required these rhythms I speak of, as the rest of the record’s contents are so spur-of-the-moment it’s impossible to catalog everything mentally. Lasers squirt to safety as whippits and explosions of steam cover all in a fine coat of warm mist, like a forest on a summer morning when you’re just rolling out of your sweaty sleeping bag. I know there’s no dancing to be had in Schou’s world; but if you could dance to tracks like the one I’m rolling to now it would erode all the distinct flavor of the dish. These aren’t straight beats because a slight shuffle augments their four-on-the-floor, only slowed-down, nature; static electricity is crackling overhead, and the rhythms are leading the way to safety. Follow the blobs of ‘thump’, bumping like parade bass drums pounded by over-sized mallets while textures shift and thread into each other in the foreground. The one problem with this LP: I can’t imagine listening to it during the day. Hell, I’m sitting in my record room at midnight and I have to wear sunglasses just to create a fitting mood for the atmospheric swirls of crystallized human pain and longing. Fabrik (not to be confused with that series, that ever-hyped series) leaves nothing to chance. If you listen to it, you will be moved, changed, or at least implanted with an ear worm you won’t find easy to shake. Congratulations to Experimedia’s Jeremy Bible for his continued success as both a label and distro (though I’m told this is the last LP for awhile; ha we’ll see, Bible’s ambitious to a fault) and, in particular, for having the vision to sign Schou like the prized specimen he is.
More about: Jannick Schou
