Reviews

Album Review: Album One - Little Bits

Life in the.abstract.lane.

by Mikel Asland: Studio Owner, producer, and (full disclosure) a personal friend.

The music by Seth Elalouf is rewarding on multiple levels. One, it is fulfilling to hear the seemingly mathematically related progressions of both the rhythm and the melodies and how these seemingly small pieces of sounds structurally melt and give way to their author’s new emotional compositions - the songs become almost elastic in their movement.

The CD also brings to the forefront what is new for this listener, a genre called cut-up. What bubbles to the surface from this genre and this CD so eloquently is the author’s taste and appreciation of its source artists - the folks from which he has so thoughtfully sampled.

By listening to this CD alone, I have been turned on to a whole new movement of musicians and song writers that I have gone on to listen to their libraries. Not only is Elalouf’s music rewarding in and of itself for its own accomplishments, but it is also rewarding for the unique and wonderful way it introduces its listeners to its influences.

The album on first listen is jarring, and throws you into a complete state of confusion. Upon listening again, it becomes calmed euphoria – something beyond what the hands of any single man could do himself. Surely I am listening to French film director Fellini’s film propaganda on CD…

The albums tracks are short and sweet during which they constantly evolve and continue to provide fuel like a rubik’s cube for the imagination. It is an octopus’s garden of mixed, manipulated, reissued acoustics, rhythms and even hymnal calls of playful prancing through the halls of sound.

Distortion, pink noise, feedback, grime, even home recordings of notebook pencils striking pads of paper, all things frequently shunned and feared by mix/audio engineers are captured daringly and given a place and a purpose. The land of misfit toys has finally found a home – and we shall call it Little Bits, the first effort from artist Seth Elalouf.

All of this experimentation comes to a dramatic hault on the song, ‘.mash.’ where a Bela Fleck sample is effortlessly chopped and replayed as if its new programming author has as much a right to it as its original author. Accompanied by a driving and soulful drum pattern that stays as organic as its free flowing sample accompaniment, ‘.mash.’ really takes off and begins to bring harmony to the forefront of the album.

As soon as Little Bits shows its side of harmonic distribution it begins to again recoil back into itself with its complex arrangements of drum strokes tweaks and turns. No sooner does Elalouf show off his complex side does a wonderfully mangled Joanna Newsom sequence blossom amidst the grime of the industrial mechanical beating of ‘.jo.nu.’ like a thirsty flower amidst high noon sun and a poised camera lens.

What can I say, I love this album, if not for its imagination, then for how its showed me so many other great artists and their sounds which I might not have thought interesting enough to listen to prior, or perhaps for its ability to give me melodies as deep and vast as the atmosphere that they are presented in. I can’t help but wonder what the author was thinking as he began his journey into this album. What motivated him, what kept his focus. The album is so vast, so wild, yet clearly demonstrates a charismatic and directed theme from start to finish. Its influences sound of hip-hop ladened with folk and AM talk radio.

The last track ‘.the.daughter.dog.plum.’ keeps one entranced in a meditative state as it is able to breath through the whole song without ever running into a continuous loop - it then opens its doors to a jolly Sleepy Hollow hoe down chant prior to the headless horseman’s fateful arrival.

Overall this album has miles to travel. It becomes more rewarding the more you listen to it. I just hope listeners are able to return to it for those additional listenings. I am anxious to hear what Elalouf comes up with next.