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Stephen James Knight, "Everyone is Beautiful to Someone"
As Edgey, Knight has released hard-pounding and visceral drum n bass andbreak-oriented music, but as Stephen James Knight he strips away most of theaggression and furious beat smashing to focus on something altogether moredelicate. It would be a crime to overlook the Aphex Twin influence on Knight’swork on Everyone is Beautiful... and as the record gets going it honestlysounds like outtakes from Selected Ambient Works Volume 1for a while. While a lot of people apethe Aphex sound, most try for the sputtering drill n bass of later eramaterial, choosing to skim past the subtle earlier sound. Of courseKnight has his own agenda and his own sound in the record somewhere, itjusttakes a few tracks for the album to actually get there. Once it does,Knight’skeen sense of space takes over and while his melodies tinker aroundwithoutjumping out of the speakers: they are balanced nicely with manipulatedsamplesand a laid-back rhythm section.
For an album released in 2005, Everyone isBeautiful to Someone works with an almost alarming lack of computertrickery and DSP wank-off. It’s actually nice to hear a record in this stylethat isn’t obviously a collection of virtual experiments for the sake of makingthings sound “fucked up.” Knight knows how far to push the envelope of sounddesign without letting the sounds take interest away from the compositions.This is, after all, an emotional journey of sorts and it works by building upand breaking down in predictable ways.
Sometimes the most affecting music isthat which plays strictly by the time-honored rules—they don’t get to berules otherwise—and this record is a lot like that. It’s not an album thatwill set new standards or light up the faces of those looking for a quickbreakcore fix of the late-breaking, just-released-in-beta-yesterday plug-ins,but it’s a nice way to see the softer side of a talented composer whose work isjust starting to speak for itself.
All of my early to mid 1990’s ambient technofeels dated now because I’ve heard those albums dozens if not hundreds oftimes. Stephen James Knight has the antidote to that situation—a record thatsounds like it could have been produced in 1994, but that is absolutely asenjoyable today as it would have been then. As the record closes up with somefrenetically programmed breaks, it leads into a pair of bonus Edgey tracks thatchange everything up and remind me who’s behind the whole thing in the firstplace.
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