Live at Quendel
Live Somewhere
Philtrum
August;
Snow; Pieces
Sections 1-6
Apparatus
Preparation
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Silencer
Philosopher's
Stone Preparation
Gareth
Mitchell, the writer' recorder and performer of Preparation, is
at heart a songwriter of the Scott Walker persuasion. It's to his
credit that this album is more an exploration of the power of music
than words. Too many songwnters are half-assed about the textures
and possibilities of their medium, while too many sonic explorers
seem cold and passionless, in it for the art not the heart. Philosopher's
Stone is a project that filters its lyricism through manipulated
sounds so that most of the album is instrumental, and the vocals
come, when they do, as a further distillation of mood.
Such
restraint characterizes the whole album. The first piece, 'Through
Palisade Trees', lays resonant loops of treated piano against pulsed
samples, while the second, 'Cathode Cataract', is four great crescendoing
minutes, all minor-key chimes and worrying bells, before it unravels
gently into sleep. Each idea is worked through to a resolution and
then stops: a fine example for all those loops-and-drones dudes,
whose ideas are introduced in the first couple of minutes and worn
threadbare in twenty-five.
It
takes 'til the third song, 'Where Regrets End', before Mitchell
actually allows vocals to crank up the intensity. His voice has
the stately devotion of Brendan Perry: deep chocolate tones that
carry simple, beautiful melodies and make them sound like the earth
singing. There's something of Dead Can Dance, too, in Mitchell's
juxtaposition of the human and the electronic: the way a song, sounding
as ancient as the hills, all medieval harmonies and phrasing and
sung out like beauty and truth were all that mattered, is backed
by drones and samples that can only have been computer generated.
And it's also this use of drones and hymnic melodies that reinforces
the patina of the spiritual that Preparation is given by its titles
('Building A Mirror Of The Stars', 'The Spirit Leaves The Body',
'Places Where The Mind Dies').
Like
ex-colleagues Dave Pearce and Richard AMP, Gareth Mitchell takes
things seriously. As influenced as they by Nick Drake and Scott
Walker, 70s psychedelia, and 80s Creation and 4AD bands, his is
another take on their amalgam of lyricism, space and noise. He adds
the touchstones of improvisation and Electronica old and new: Zoviet
France, Main, Labradford, Stars of the Lid. Ascending swells of
sound are punctuated by white noise, melodies crumble under atonal
rumblings or are heard distantly in chords and loops. So much, so
mid-to-late 90s- as heard across continents, from Bristol and Texas
and New Zealand. This is music in which emotion is wrung out of
effects boxes and computers, humanity pitted against manipulation,
and as such is something of a soundtrack for our times. Where Gareth
Mitchell succeeds uniquely is in his measured use of vocals. When
he sings - not mutters, not whispers, but really sings - he makes
sense out of his music. What is implicit in the instrurmentals,
in the melancholic drones and dislocated samples, all the nostalgia
and decay and regret and longing, is finally made evident.
LUCY
CAGE
Alternative
Press
Alternative Press No. 112, Nov. 1997
Gareth
Mitchell chose to record outside of Enghnd's AMP (his main band)
for good reason. AMP this ain't, with no serious emphasis on guitar
architecture. It works more with mantra than with drone. Deeply
personal contemplations anchored by unoryhodox sample loops and
semi-melodic textures put Philosopher's Stone on a discreet mountain
top closer the coast of Main.
Open
and cavenous, Gareth's approach to sampling shares much common ground
with that of Main's Robert Hampson. The difference lies somewhere
between the near Antarctic atmospheres of Hampson and the contrasting
Autumn plateau of Mitchell. Cue Zoviet France-like blur pedodically
splashed with vaguely operatic vocals, recalling breathier moments
from In The Nursery, Sixth Comm and Conlrolled Bleeding, Preparation
lays on a thick, deep-gray mood, like 3 a.m. fog rolling into a
small seaside town. Let Gareth be your lighthouse as he bridges
the era/genre continuum. (Kranky, POB 578743, Chicago IL 60657)
Troy Palmer
Wire
Philosopher's
Stone Preparation
KRANKY
KRANK 019 CD
Philosopher's
Stone is Amp's Gareth Mitchell. Preparation has a similar effect
to Dissolve, though it's resolutely non-rock. It's constructed from
loops generated by guitar, percussion and all nnanner of concrete
sources These can sound like footfalls through a spectral landscape,
as on 'Through Palisade Trees' Mega-loud wedges of teeth grating
noises are occasionally drilled into the mix for short durations,
as on 'Places Where The Mind Dies' They might be nothing compared
to Merzbow or KK Null, but in this context they'll get you leaping
for the volume control. Such disorientating blasts aside, preparation
is spartan music that works at least 50 per cent by implying something
that is not there. Elsewhere, when Mitchell flexes his voice on
'Where Regrets End', it sounds for a moment like Scott Walker singing
with The Hafler Trio. It s a shame he didn't make greater use of
this combination. Mike Barnes
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