Highpoint Lowlife
Posted: October 7th, 2004, by Stuart FowkesDiscovered a couple of records from the rather lovely Highpoint Lowlife rekkid label in the new music box (unlocked once a day at precisely midnight, releasing new musical treats into the world), the first of which is the debut album from DoF, If More Than Twenty People Laughed It Wasn’t Funny, the work of one Brian Hulick. Opener’A Path Lights This Way’ is all acoustic guitar plucking rubbing up against tricky beats, mechanical whirring and dancing robots, as if Smog and Aphex Twin were doing a live set at opposite ends of the same room. Initially, it’s an arresting formula: a monochrome, frantic take on the bucolic breakbeats of Four Tet. Yeah! Squarepusher goes folk! Ace! But then track two is all acoustic guitar plucking rubbing up against tricky beats, mechanical whirring and dancing robots, as if Smog and Aphex Twin were doing a live set at opposite ends of the same room. And track three…
And therein lies the problem – there’s not enough going on, in terms of track structure or variety of ideas to sustain an album. An acoustic guitar or piano melody generally kicks things off, accompanied by the odd spatter of spilt drums, and built up until the beats subsume everything else and the track becomes more about rhythm than melody. In fact, it’s the record’s shortest track, ‘Conformity To Fact’ that gets me most excited: swoops of keyboard taken straight from the set of Alien drown themselves in the drum patterns, and there’s a welcome break from mimsy acoustic guitar. Final track ‘Heartbeats of Fireflies Among the Stars’ is the most satisfying interpretation of the DoF sound, with a melody that resonates throughout, and sounds like a DHR remix of something by Neotropic or Capitol K.
In small doses, then, this is excellent, but each piece builds and drops in pretty much the same way, and with half of the album’s track topping six minutes, the record’s not without periods of longueur. And, although really well put together in their own right, the beats seem to sit over the top of the guitar and piano melody with apparently little regard or thought for what the other is doing, as if they’ve been crossfaded by a malevolent DJ over the top of some pleasant but inconsequential instrumental folk.
Some more variety in instrumentation might also help things: as it stands, there’s potential for a fine individual take on Venetian Snares-meets-Aerial M, but an unwillingness to veer away from an imperfect template means I’ll be getting my folktronic kicks elsewhere for now…
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Stuart Fowkes
Stuart is possibly one of the tallest people you have ever seen. He towers above your puny skyscrapers like Rodan on steroids, his blonde spikes puncturing the atmosphe re like crazed, gelled knives. In real life he is part of the Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element pop outfit, and writes for other websites as well as this one - the cheeky blighter. He favours the noisier end of the musical spectrum, with a fervour which would seem to indicate a dodgy heavy metal past.
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