a r t i s t : Fieldhead
t i t l e : They Shook Hands For Hours
d a t e : 2009
l a b e l : Home Assembly Music
c a t : HAM003CD
s o u r c e : CDDA
g e n r e : Electronic/Ambient/Downtempo
r l s. d a t e : Nov/2009
t r a c k s : 10
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 52,3 MB
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Following on from releases by Northerner and The Declining
Winter, the Home Assembly Music imprint makes it
three-from-three with this excellent solo outing from Paul
Elam (a full-time member of the aforementioned Declining
Winter). On the accompanying press notes, the label itself
levels comparisons with Machinefabriek and The Caretaker, and
you can certainly hear where they're coming from, although
neither of those artists is especially likely to be dishing
out Dilla-esque beats on their opening track the way Elam does
on 'The Train Is A Rainbow'. Similarly, 'Document One' is very
much in the same vein as Lone or Keaver & Brause - perhaps
even Bibio's recent work - in its re-jigging of modern beat
compressions with old, faded source material. There's enough
beatless material here to destabilise those sorts of
categorisations however: during 'Of October's scratchy glitch
orchestrations and the Tim Hecker-style tonal drifts of 'Half
Names' a different picture emerges. This hauntological hip-hop
opus is really quite special, and certainly with songs like
'I'm Fond Of Maps' (think Burial, circa 1920) and 'He'd Found
The Sea' there's an indication of exciting things to come from
this artist. Highly recommended.
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01-This Train Is A Rainbow [03:49]
02-Half Names [03:21]
03-Document One [04:46]
04-They Shook Hands For Hours [03:17]
05-Of October [04:10]
06-He'd Found The Sea [04:26]
07-Songs Well Known [03:04]
08-Broken [02:43]
09-I'm Fond Of Maps [03:26]
10-Introductions [06:17]
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39:19 min