14 November 2010

Taylor Deupree - January (2004, Spekk)

Taylor Deupree (b. 1971) is a sound artist, graphic designer, and photographer residing in New York, he is also behind the record label 12K which focuses on minimalism and contemporary musical forms.

There is a blunt radicalism with his music, in the sense that with his actions, works and positions in the minimal, experimental, ambient electronic forms of music, he imposed himself and emerged naturally as a major figure, strangely much more as an obvious reference than as a musician through his records. Taylor Deupree is a land-cleaner, a pioneer, with a keen interest towards theoretical, abstract and prospective sound structures and textures. 

But often, besides this, his records lack of a seductive emotional dimension and I end up enjoying most of his production at first but without returning to it and instead giving more attention to intimate rewarding artists following  partially but obviously his trails, like Sawako, The Green Kingdom, Seaworthy, Fourcolor, Pillowdiver or Shuttle358. Taylor Deupree seems to release music as a medium to demonstrate and explain his intentions and ideas. Of course there is a sensitive part but I've got the feeling its importance is just secondary.

The inspiration of "January" came from a Japanese tour he did in 2003 with Richard Chartier and Sogar. Sawako is contributing with her voice and fragments of toy piano. It is a very ascetic record with a monotonous melancholic perspective, and the surfaces and textures of the sonorities are always impressive, show a high dexterity and leave you free to float inside them. If you listen closely, the quality is evident but there is no anchor which will flood your  mind and take you inside, you are just going through a gallery, slipping through lighted rooms with hanged mysterious photographs but always with a foot still not entering it or with another already thinking of other destinations.

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