exercises in style
rrr045
25th May 2008
6 tracks
15:27
21.2Mb
If there's any justice in the world this release should be well and truly be getting caned on the turntables of the trendiest in the know clubs right about now albeit that'll be the kind of clubs who are tuned onto the same wavelength as the likes of Radio 3's very excellent and of late missing in action 'mixing it' show. 'Exercises in Style' is the debut release from the Japanese / English duo (who go by the mysterious nom de plumes * and _) known as Kirameki who it seems are either (or perhaps both) impish pranksters of the very odd or purveyors of a genre not yet on most critics radars let alone mapped or given a super funky name by some unnamed tiresome troop of finger twiddling music writers. You decide.
Released on the Dutch imprint Rack and Ruin, Kirameki it seems love nothing more than bastardising an ever widening range of melodic vocabulary into their genre deflecting aural tapestry. With their eye well and truly trained on the surreal, Kirameki delight in the eclectic and erratic - their sound is all at once skittish though highly compulsive listening, dare we say an entertaining amalgam where elements of abstract blip core, classical, trip wired beats, schizoid diode manipulating twiddling, electro, ambience, Dadaist montages and impromptu break beats are all shoehorned, cross cultured and spewed out into a sublime freak show of dislocated sound collages the likes of which sadly heard around these parts these days since perhaps the early career work of Aphex Twin, though that said their application of cut up collages and their detail for the abstract and obscure is more rooted with a Stockhausen like influence albeit re-drilled through the mindset of Cornelius (none more so than on the strangely beguilingly bitter sweet and almost down tempo 'bubble car pile up').
Six tracks feature on this weirdly wonderful and out there EP, 'Exercises in Style' the title cut opening the proceedings in fine style as it superbly melds the smooth textures of the classical styled key florets with the rough uneven treads of menacingly psychotic break beats whilst still leaving enough time to impishly have a quick dig at Duran Duran (second mention this missive - a portent to a reform perhaps or have they already we can't keep up with it all) and where the hell did those elephants come from? Moving swiftly onward or should that be backwards or possibly sideways 'take it or leave it' is a slice of well drilled tomfoolery comprising jarring blip beats (see Art of Noise), brief flashes of Bernard Herrmann montages, some nifty moments of chilled sophistication fried with BBC Radiophonic Workshop overloads - I kid you not.
Elsewhere the decidedly hallucinatory lunatic 'Bunny and the Electric Horseman' strangely borders between an acid dipped take of 'the sugar plum fairy' fused with obscurest library sounds from the dark heart of as seriously wired Broadcast on this occasion finding themselves commissioned to re-script collages in the best tradition of those ominous and frankly disturbing eastern European children's TV animation backdrops from the early 70's.
Sadly our copy refused to play ball and let loose the lying in wait 'john lennon vs. the martians' which is a shame because based on title alone we suspect strange goodies loom large while the parting 'flash bang whinney' was equally astray though did retune in at intervals like a scrambled transmission to reveal what our ears thought was moments of exotic sheens, home fires burning rodeo show accents and er - yodelling. Mind you a quick check on their my space page more than compensated for the impromptu cessation of sound when we hooked up to the highly recommended of disfigured screwball impishness of the Atari Teenage Riot like 'kirameki'. We need more of this - and soon.
The Sunday Experience (UK - 7/08)
A former editor once said that Bluesbunny was turning into the home of the eclectic. Even today, we like to think that are big floppy ears are open to all kinds of musical curiosities. One such curiosity was this release by Kirameki. These are not so much songs as sound collages. It would probably have taken many man years to do this kind of thing in the days of analogue tape but we live in a digital Pro Tools age. Samples and the occasional bit of music are joined together to create 6 tracks of oddness. All the songs jump about madly but always include something familiar to keep your attention. "Exercises in Style" even throws in a reference to the Michael Zager Band, for example. "Bubblecar Pile Up" could be one of Ryuichi Sakamoto's early mood pieces whilst "Bunny & the Electric Horseman" sounds like a demented karaoke style take on the works of Michael Nyman. The title track itself reeks of discord and sonic disturbances. It's all bit confusing but actually manages to be intriguing at the same time. Whether this is art or music is the question. Melody, harmonies and hooks are notable by their absence but the end result is nonetheless never less than interesting. One to ponder upon.
bluesbunny.com
Kirameki is a twisted little set of tracks in an electro, break beat, ambient, noise, monster vain. It’s way more intense than the previous _ outing. A kind of trip-hop Aphex Twin style freakery is going on here. The songs stop and start and twist in all directions, sometimes in beautiful ways as in Bunny & The Electric Horsemen or spooky ways like on, well the end of that track. Exercises In Style keeps you on your toe that’s for sure. John Lennon Vs. The Martians has some snippets of a deep and pumping baseline mixed with some space age Morse code and phat drums that break out into drum’n’bass style cutups and even funky house territory all at once. It all reminds me of Coldcut and their Journeys by a DJ mix, which is just sublime and a classic mash-up of so many styles of music it’s unbelievable. The closer Flash Bang Whinny has some distorted electric guitar lines and some ace loops of sound. I love the names of the tracks on Exercises In Style they are full of fun and randomness, just like the music.
thesonicminefeild.blogspot.com
Net labels are a nice way for underground bands to get their music distributed worldwide and freely. Of course that also means that the majority of bands on such like platforms are into wildly experimental sounds that would probably never be signed by someone who wants to make a living off the music. Kirameki are no exception, but that doesn’t mean that their music doesn’t have its merits. Consisting of the Japanese musician _ and the British musician *, the two-piece concocts short pieces that use massive sampling from the most diverse sources (documentaries, video games, music,…) and probably also some sounds of their own. Kirameki don’t reveal much about themselves, prefer to remain in a hazy cloud of obscurity, and that’s ok! At times they craft really spooky atmospheres, like on Bubblecar Pileup which starts with a shaky piano and then turns into dark ambient, making this an ideal example of soundtrack music. Take It Or Leave It on the other hand confronts simple beats with ethereal distortion that send shivers down your spine.
Exercises In Style is exactly what it claims to be. There sound constructions are elaborate, and it would be interesting to watch these guys pasting their songs together. The question is now: will this also work in a full-length situation with possibly longer and even more accessible songs? Maybe that’s just not intended, but if they tried, they could come up with some really exception electronica!
disagreement.net
An electronica duo delving into the wilfully obscure and wonderful, Kirameki make the kind of music that at once makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, yet on the other hand feels gloriously essential and magical.
With new EP, EXERCISES IN STYLE, the duo unleash six tracks of various blips, bleeps, samples, beats and madness that almost defy musical definition; echoes of the Aphex Twin, DJ Yoda or Atari Teenage Riot permeate matters, but essentially EXERCISES IN STYLE is an experience all of its very own. Title track EXERCISES IN STYLE rides in on industrialised bass and keyboard motifs, before side tracking into wildly surreal and unusual directions, whilst on BUBBLEGUM PILEUP, the duo seem to be soundtracking some bizarre seventies Eastern European kids TV experiment, a mish mash of criss-crossing beats, piano melodies, obscure samples and avant garde strangeness. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT sounds like leftfield techno composed on a BBC micro computer from the early eighties whilst the avant garde classical meets Lynchian nightmare of BUNNY AND THE ELECTRIC HORSEMEN makes for gloriously uneasy listening.
For brilliantly skewed and deranged electronic musings, Kirameki deliver an adventure in sound that you can't afford to miss. EXERCISES IN STYLE is a twisted musical journey that imagines the BBC Radiophonic Workshop output of the late seventies colliding headfirst with the Aphex Twin on a particularly inspired acid high, undoubtedly strange and unusual, but gloriously wonderful and delicious all the same.
ukmusicreview.com
