a r t i s t : Victor Bermon
t i t l e : Arriving at Night
d a t e : 2007
l a b e l : Hefty
c a t : HEFTY060CD
s o u r c e : CDDA
g e n r e : Lo-Fi
r l s. d a t e : Feb/2007
t r a c k s : 13
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 56,9 MB
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One question in the current musical landscape begs to be
asked: Where did the quiet romantic composer working within
electronic music's own folk form go? We need them back. The
listening experience in this over-saturated moment - when
Satie and Eno are fully digested and Aphex Twin and Oval are
yesterday's news - has left understated visionary music
without a space to claim its own.
It's hard out here for fools of all ages that harbor ye olde
souls and a yen for the future! The tools of creation may have
expanded thousand-fold at the same time that new ideas are
drying up like natural resources, but survival is still not
guaranteed for the seeker. Enter VICTOR BERMON from Perth,
Australia. BERMON is a student at the University of Western
Australia, but has been making wonderful music for a few years
now. Past releases can be found on labels like Traum,
Expanding and Background, under aliases of FOTEC FOYAMAT and
MILLER & FIAM. In 2004, BERMON submitted some bedroom music
sketches to Chicago label Hefty (home to Telefon Tel Aviv),
which lead to BERMONÆs appearance on Hefty's ninth edition of
their Immediate Action series. This is the sound that
"Arriving At Night" continues to mine. After two years of
heavy woodshedding, this is VICTOR BERMONÆs debut album, and
itÆs a glorious work, well worth the wait.
It's a sound with no name - now that the uber-saturated music
industry has left tags such as IDM, downtempo and electronica
utterly hollow. But one could do worse than calling it ambient
music for the post-hip-hop set, made of unfolding melodies by
turns sunny and partly cloudy, created using the oblique
strategies of cut-up producers from Teo Macero to DJ Premier.
And note that most of its rhythmic touches are secondary.
That last part is one of BERMON's signatures. Throughout
"Arriving at Night", the beats are more after-thoughts than
manifestoes. Though tracks like the "Farewell Lunch for Laura"
and "Final Discussion" glide on backbeats that harkens back to
crate-dug jazz records discovered in the waning days of the
New School (but with sample textures that scream
"post-techno"), these beats are prone to not lasting long and
to disappearing in a blink. Mostly BERMON's melodic expanses
are long established when a pulse finally strides in to
complete one of his sonic puzzles. Album-defining songs such
as "We Face Each Other" and "On the Way Back" are built of
warm wide chords, and layers of melodic counterpoint (at times
rhythmic, at times dissonant). Acoustic guitars strum in the
background, or pick their way through the fore, but always,
they welcome the dawn.
In short, the beauty of VICTOR BERMON's music is timeless and
emotive. Such descriptions have become bitter to many a modern
beat-miner's palette, in itself an indictment of the
ideological tides of taste. (As if, in the long run, music
based on emotion and tradition will not always trump styleà)
But in the midst of such over-saturated moments, it is crucial
that fools of all ages with olde souls are still out there
looking forward through the past's eyes. Ambient, you see,
withers not.
A cinematic beauty lies at the heart of this gorgeous release.
It is fully recommended.
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01-Farewell Lunch For Laura [03:48]
02-We Face Each Other [03:57]
03-Photographs Are Not Memories [03:53]
04-Unprepared [06:14]
05-View Of The Islands [03:25]
06-First Encounters, [03:16]
07-Portrait [02:06]
08-Famous Discussion [03:29]
09-Theatre Of Signs [04:08]
10-On The Way Back [02:50]
11-Stacked Notebooks [03:13]
12-Prospect Park, [04:04]
13-On This Night [03:38]
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48:01 min