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Marking the much-anticpated return of Main, this album is much more along the lines of a microsound record than that of Robert Hampson's former Beggars' Banquet days doing guitar-based soundscapes. 'Tau' is very stripped down and clean, and features a dryness and lightness that heretofore has not been prevalent in Main releases.K-RAA-K
The otherwise untitled tracks are divided into two sections: "Heuristic" (the first five) and "Mirror" (the last three). Digital bursts give way to fragile yet angular planes of noise. Low pulsing echoes and drones lay underneath twitches and scratches. 'Tau' seems more prone to interruptions and unease as opposed to his former rhythmic lull, and as evidenced in the third track, is very spatial: Hampson is able to create feelings of both vastness and minutiae simultaneously. On the eighth track, the reverberation of footsteps down a hall and nearly inaudible fragments of a voice infuse a human element, which nevertheless remains somewhat clinical. It is likely due to Hampson's background with Loop and his previous Main records that his new microsound leanings are infused with an uncommon depth.
 
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This collection of three sessions shows a group evolving from a whisper to (less a scream, than) the ghost of a mumble. Movietone’s introspective sound is naturally overlooked in a society which places more value on action, fast talking, and loudness. Their music remains elusive to define and to grasp, with a vocal style, choice of instruments, and an arm’s length embrace of folk and improvisational jazz which sets them apart, even from such contemporaries as Third Eye Foundation and Flying Saucer Attack in the post-rock branch of (what can loosely be termed) the Bristol post-rock "scene." The best of their work might be described by the verse (Peter 3:4) "let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a quiet spirit."
There is a long list of artists that made better versions of their songs for John Peel’s radio program than they did for their own albums. Whether this stems from the urge to impress the great man or the liberated feeling of getting away from their normal environs, everyone from Ivor Cutler, Echo & The Bunnymen, Billy Mackenzie, Microdisney, and The Smiths is on that list; which I am now reminded includes Movietone. Things commence here with the somnambulant terrain of "Mono Valley" and whispered vocals very low in the mix. This is voice as synthetic mood hiss rather than conveyor of words. A tension builds which is released by bits of noise: the sound of bottles being smashed, glass shards strewn, then squalling saxophone, sliced jabs of guitar, and discordant piano, all crashing in at intervals. It reminds me of the added background effects on a couple of pieces on Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures.
Movietone's progression is well documented by these sessions. "Chocolate Grinder" resembles the noise of a band of toy instruments following a slinky bass line beneath a nocturnal urban wasteland, it’s if they have upped sticks to the Parisian catacombs to fiddle around with jazz instruments while repairing a washing machine; the pace and volume are increased a bit around the midpoint of its six minute duration but it never goes into overdrive—like a car ride at night down the M5 to Bristol while closely observing the speed limit. "Summer" is a slight but delightful track, the instrumental equivalent of a pastoral-hued poem read by a girl (modest, beautiful, and ordinary) who sits in the corner of the kitchen at a party having avoided eye contact with everyone. "Stone" is a wilder screech of a song, as tension again is released "and all we ever wanted, is here." While it’s a joy to actually be able to hear the words on "Darkness Blue Glow," they do seem less important than the sound of the voice. "Heatwave Pavement" stumbles along down an ordinary street, with coughs, mumbled snippets pieces of verse "beautiful…ending..tent..street.. and, now raining again...it was like the Mediterranean...a black rock...the tide… compose my mind...the music...have to do..the image..sitting there..people’s voices, people smiling...it was nice."
"Hydra" is the major highlight here, and in the group’s entire discography. Brisk, taut, a swinging mood of a type that could almost be jazz yet clearly is not, and of course its exact meaning remains obscured beneath a loosely sketched depiction of a beach. The group were standing apart from other kinds of music, in part by choosing and sticking to their own codes of expression. Much like Disco Inferno would do a few years later. This honing of identity, of a distinctive sound where tiny deviations can then seem like a big departure, is a strength rather than a flaw. Movietone's music is a quiet rebellion, regardless of how big a splash it made, or how many influential ripples can be noted. This rebellion is similar in tone to Alvin Curran’s brilliant Songs and Views From the Magnetic Garden. I have heard said that the group methodology contains devices used in the making of cinema vérité, to depict reality with an unadorned quality, found say in the films directed by John Cassavetes, wherein (if I understand correctly) the plot is only as important as having the participants appear as if they are not actors. There is a recognizable power is that achievement which can almost be felt on another of the best of these session tracks: "Blank Like Snow" carries a poignant ache that is attached to the creativity of those who insist on retaining the status of ordinary, everyday, people. We hear their music, and it can at times be transcendent, but we can also feel them having their cups of tea, wearing their secondhand clothes from Oxfam, reading the same books and watching the same films or television series as the rest of us. And with Movietone, the sonic palate of their songs is similar to a real design classic: Ordnance Survey maps - which show every church, ditch, hillock, footpath, phone box, road, rock, ruin, stile, and weir, in an ultra-detailed depiction of a small area.
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Now complete, Dunn's sprawling and epic "The Cohesive Redundancies" series takes the composer's love of massive statements to its logical extreme (and perhaps even beyond it).  Spanning four albums of wildly varying lengths, Dunn's sustained examination of "futility and beauty" feels somewhat reminiscent of The Caretaker's "Everywhere at the End of Time" series, as each section feels like a deeper stage of deterioration and mutation than the previous one. Given that, the first installment of the series is the one that will most appeal to fans of Dunn's usual distinctive ambient/drone fare, but listeners amenable to more radical sound art will find the rest of the series to be quite a fascinating (and oft-challenging) rabbit hole to explore as well. In fact, it is even a challenge to determine which album is the most dramatic outlier in Dunn's oeuvre, as the series alternately delves into tender piano elegy (TCR: Deuxième), an extended deconstruction and reworking of a single piece ("Fantasia on a Theme of Affection") from TCR-P1 with collaborator Simon Stader (TCR III), and an '80s Italian noise tape and Giallo-inspired cannibalization by Thomas A. Brust (TCR IV). That said, Brust's contribution is quite something indeed, clocking in at a confrontationally monolithic four-hour tour de force of cold and blackened industrial-damaged drones.
For the sake of simplicity, it is useful to divide this overwhelming opus into two categories: the melodic/expected side of Kyle Bobby Dunn and the radical deconstruction of Kyle Bobby Dunn (I am surprised that the latter has not been an album title yet). It is still quite a challenge to make any general statements about this series, however, as even the first two installment are wildly different from one another, but listeners merely hoping for Dunn’s usual brand of sublime ambient will not want to venture any further than the first installment (reviewed separately here). It is admittedly a bit more "durational" than some of the composer's previous fare (the album's drifting and dreamlike centerpiece clocks in at nearly an hour), but it is a strong stand-alone album that checks nearly every box of my personal "classic KBD drone" checklist: an elegantly minimal processed guitar theme lazily winding across a stark and somewhat cool backdrop of lingering haze, tape hiss, room tone, and enigmatic buried sounds (it is no coincidence that Dunn lists "mic placement" among his instrumental credits). The "redundancy" bit of "The Cohesive Redundancies" starts to sneakily manifest itself with the surprisingly brief Deuxième, which Dunn describes as a "somber piano epic for the late and lovely Joni Sadler" (a fellow Montreal artist in the Constellation milieu). "Threnody for Joni" is an unusual piece for Dunn, as it calls to mind a version of Harold Budd that is stretched and dissolved into a semi-ambient haze. While I have no idea if "Threnody" literally blossomed forth from one of the pieces on TCR P-1, it at least feels like an expansion and evolution of the Budd-like passages in "Pavane for the Internal Monologue."
When the colder, industrial-tinged thrum of the third installment's "Hamstrung at Heathrow Airport Horn Suite" arrives, however, things veer decisively into more unexpected and unusual territory and only get darker and more gnarled from there.As Dunn puts it, Stader's transformations examine "sadness and suffering in more brutal detail" and "take variants from the previous sessions to create new works."In more concrete terms, it is an unrepentantly challenging album that demands almost superhuman patience from listeners, as TCR III's four pieces are chilled, aggressively minimal, and glacial in pace, but they can also be quite beautiful in a bleak way.My favorite piece is "Complex Illumination on a Theme (variante automnale)," which my notes alternately describe as "grainy dreamlike billowing with a bit of sizzle," "slow-motion breaking waves," and "fluttering and flickering ghosts trapped inside a single frayed and dissolving drone." Other pieces call to mind a slowly burning incense stick, a shimmering fog rolling across a windswept prairie, or the slow/durational cinema of James Benning.Admittedly, it takes some time to adapt to the near-geologic time scale, but acquired tastes can offer deeper pleasures than lower hanging fruit and I would say that is true of TCR III: someone, somewhere will likely emerge from the album with a blown or at least permanently reconfigured mind.Dunn, of course, did not stop decide to stop with that dark horse contender for best album in the series though.Consequently, we also have the certain-to-be-polarizing TCR IV.
I personally still have no idea what to make of the series' massive final installment, as I certainly enjoy its grimy and lurid Italian inspirations, yet generally enjoying an aesthetic and wanting an overwhelming four-hour dose of said aesthetic are different things altogether.Then again, maybe they are not, as TCR IV features two or three pieces that unexpectedly transform into something quite good after 10, 20, or sometimes even 30 minutes of noisily droning near-statis.It almost feels like Brust decided to willfully alienate every last weak-willed or impatient listener before unveiling all the cool shit (an endearing move, if true).Do the extreme durations make the payoffs more satisfying?I honestly have no idea, but pieces like "In the Dead of Night Thru the Vast St. Mary" definitely get somewhere compelling if I am willing to stick around long enough.Beyond that, TRC IV will hold a lot of appeal for anyone craving the sounds of a KBD album being bulldozed by a harsh noise set.I cannot say I was craving that myself, yet there are plenty of rewarding moments that call to mind a contact mic’d biplane smashing into the ground in extreme slow motion, a dub remix of an earthquake, or someone tenaciously adjusting the tracking on a VCR in hopes that a more melodic piece will emerge.Regardless of how much I will ultimately warm to the unrecognizably ravaged mutations of the third and fourth installments, "The Cohesive Redundancies" is one hell of an admirable achievement.It is probably is not the series of albums that anyone knew they wanted, but that is how great art works: something novel smacks me in the face and I am then forced to reevaluate what I thought I knew and liked.This series may be an exhausting and prickly artistic statement, but it is also a wildly ambitious, bold, and mostly successful one as well.
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