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TBA, "Size And Tears" and Tusia Beridze, "The Other"
For reasons unknown, Thomas Brinkmann's Georgian muse simultaneously presents her third and fourth full-length releases for the clandestine Max Ernst imprint, comprising three discs worth of all-new material. Seldom groundbreaking, flagrantly derivative, and intermittently appealing, Natalie Beridze's purposefully glitchy compositions appear apropos of the icier temperatures of the season.
Brinkmann's production silence in 2007 was near deafening after the explosive back-to-the-well experimentation of Klick Revolution, which makes it all the more worse that he would choose Berdize's bland brand of regurgitated sound for such grand attention in lieu of new material of his own. The unfocused TBA double album Size And Tears and its immediate single disc successor The Other as Tusia Beridze dropped concurrently this past autumn, and, admittedly, it has taken me much time to comprehend why Brinkmann opted for such inessential overindulgence. Had the latter of these releases been unleashed in lieu of the expendable former, I would probably find myself far less irritated by his decision to release such undeserved glut from a minor artist.
Without any hesitation, I can assert that Size And Tears embodies the type of self-indulgent pretension that no listener should willingly subject himself to when, out there in the marketplace, a plethora of great new music awaits. Full of amateurish tape manipulation of speech samples, "Monster Council And She Goes Under The Ocean" sets the precedent for the dreadful experience that follows. In her creative attempts to invent an updated take on Lewis Carroll's Alice tales, Beridze spends too much time on concept and not nearly enough on anything else. "Teacher" basks in its own quasi-cool, reveling in the clichéd apathy of its hackneyed, droll delivery and tinkling piano schmaltz. Comprised of throwaway track after throwaway track, this dubious collection feels far more like a cathartic hard drive dump than the creative, introspective journey it presents itself as. Clocking in at over two hours, the barely palatable Size And Tears demands a level of patience and attention that it just doesn’t deserve.
Though undeniably dated and practically stinking of its naturally moldy 1990s IDM influences, The Other is by far the more stimulating and lucid of the two, creating coherent songs from the incomplete sketches and concepts scribbled in the margins of the disjointed Size And Tears. Gauzy opener "After Me In Soft Poles" instantly recalls Aphex Twin's ambient days, replete with intimate warmth like an old blanket or knitted sweater. At the same time, "Weeksends" seems derived partly from his Polygon Window period with agoraphobic, heavy machine atmospheres begging in vain for a hard 4/4 rhythm a la "Quoth" to erupt and lay waste to the factory floor. Occasional Brinkmann collaborator Marcus Schmickler, known best for his work as Pluramon, lends his voice to "Beam Plaster," a laid back blend of shimmering drones and softly skittering percussive clicks. Beyond this, Beridze handles the remainder of the vocal work. At times, her tense, evocative delivery lies somewhere between Cosi Fanni Tutti's hypnotic cool and Nico's alien indifference as on "Somewhere There's A Father," "From UR Eyes," and the abstractly funky "Into The Lost Moments." Sometimes, however, she almost reaches the pulchritude of 4AD's former stable of quasi-gothic chamber singers. "X. It Snow" shrouds Beridze in a shoegazer mist, her slurred voice simultaneously whispering and calling out amid the thick fog of pads and glitchy crackles.
Devoid of originality, these two releases provide retrograde entertainment for those still clinging to the specters of electronic music’s recent past. Considering Brinkmann's thrilling and enlightened body of work, Beridze seems almost unworthy of sharing space on Max Ernst with him. Then again, after listening to Brinkmann's latest, When Horses Die, perhaps the man has grown fond of regressive mediocrity in the hopes that others might as well. Either that or he has completely lost the plot, in which case I am more than a little inclined to blame the muse.
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