Friday, October 28

Vital Weekly Review

Vital Weekly
Labelboss Goh Lee Kwang is also very active as a composer of his own music and on his 'Back2Bed' he adds something to the music that we don't see a lot these days and that is humour. The cover is in simple cartoon style, including text balloon's and the instruments are 'guitars, electronics, etc.'. The best are the three pieces that come next and which make up some fifty-five minutes of music. In 'No Beat' we have indeed no beats, but some fine chaotic electronic sound, of loops swirling in out of the mix, both continuously bouncing around, as well one-off affairs thrown in. 'The Rolling Stoner' (see? humour!) is more about field recordings being electronically processed, but there might be some kind of guitar pushed around in the background, and slowly grows into a bigger beast of improvised sounds on the guitar and percussion, but it seems to me that electronics play an important role here. In it's seventeen minutes it is fiercely leaping around and has a very free and spacious feeling. The final piece is 'Tanah Air - My Land' and is very sparse, with a clicking/scratching sound and field recordings of thunder. In all of these three pieces Goh Lee Kwang shows he's capable of playing around with a limited amount of sounds for a longer amount of time and keeping it all interesting, moving them around in changing configurations.
- Frans De Waard -