Brutalist marks the return of prodigious electronic producer Robert Logan, with his first full album on Slowfoot since 2016’s Flesh Decomposed. Jumping from clinical dub techno to ambient, IDM and electro to leftfield electroacoustic experiments, Logan’s usual electronic / symphonic inspirations and ambitions are felt heavily yet are married to something new - a strange, driving minimalism sits at the core of this body of work.
Brutalist is a potent, labyrinthine experience, containing 24 tracks recorded and produced over a 13 year period. This is ugly sounds sounding beautiful, impossible combinations working as music. Massive, monolithic structures emerging through rain, compositions demanding simultaneous introversion and dancing in underground bunkers. Music for after the fallout - a future reborn, remade from the elements. Just as Brutalism emerged in the aftermath of World War Two as an architectural statement of positive intent, an affirmation of the potential of human endeavour and of rebuilding the future after the horror and destruction that preceded it, so Brutalist is a testament to the indomitable soul's capacity to rebuild amidst profound devastation. Robert Logan, faced with the crucible of severe chronic health difficulties, transmuted the pain into finishing an album, emerging with a retrospective work that reflects the spirit of architectural Brutalism – stark, raw, yet strangely beautiful. Amongst other sufferings, Logan suffered a devastating sound accident at the beginning of 2020 and spent lockdown battling catastrophic tinnitus, and this record is his attempt to revive from and appropriate the new difficulty. The album was born from an obsession with making impossible combinations work as music, like the sound of concrete tripping the light fantastic. Its rhythms are elastic and forceful, with a penetrating physical presence about them, and the album walks a special tightrope between hypnotism and electrifying surprise. The functional elements of noise are teased out, manipulated and celebrated, divisions between old musical and new digital elements dissolved, and something fresh has been rebuilt out of sonic destruction - something purer, raw and stripped of any apologies in the face of the trauma. From the apocalyptic, filmic soundworlds of 'Seven Bowls,' where the cries of sea creatures echo through aquatic ruins, to the stark, minimalist beats of 'Minimizing,' which resonate like rhythmic pulses against cold cement, the album delivers an explorative, diverse and captivating sonic experience over its two hour duration. Tracks like 'Free Spikes' delve into more radical realms of deconstructed experimentation, marked by fierce collapsing polyrhythms, while 'The Dead Hand' offers up something more approachable, a dark groove that brings Massive Attack to mind, interjected with brooding film noir horn arrangements. Album opener ‘Microstates’ recalls the stark and hazy urban jitter of Burial’s first LP. In Logan’s words. “Brutalist is inspired by a continual excitement in rethinking the raw building blocks of music and sound. I think there’s a tension zone really engaging music occupies - the delicate but tough, tight but loose, deep but not overworked, extreme sounding but not harsh on ears paradox. That holding of the space between seemingly impossible sonic opposites is what I love most in music.” A mysterious, unassuming artist, Logan released his first solo album Cognessence, aged 19, to critical acclaim in 2007. Mary Anne Hobbs described the music on his debut as “absolutely outstanding… impossible to quantify”, with BBC Experimental calling Logan “…something of a prodigy… a man that is already showing a maturity and a musical/textural understanding that many simply never find.” Since then Logan has carved out an unconventional career dictated by his ambition to explore the mental spaces sound can conjure. Aside from his impressive slew of solo albums and EP’s, he has made two albums with ambient guru Steve Roach, worked on album projects with heavyweights such as Grace Jones, Brian Eno, Morcheeba, and, most recently, John Grant on his latest album ‘The Art of The Lie’. He has also pursued a successful parallel career composing music for the screen, often alongside producer Ivor Guest, a long term collaboration which has yielded a few Oscar and Grammy nominations along the way. His most recent endeavours include ongoing collaboration with conceptual artist Kristina Buch for installations at the Akademie Der Künste, lecturing on the history of electronic music at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, and as composer for An Orange from Jaffa (winner of various awards, including the Grand Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival) and HBO's Agents of Chaos and a.k.a Mr. Chow. |
CREDITS
All tracks composed and produced by Robert Logan
with: Andy Knight - trumpet [trk 8] Daniel Rogerson - guitar [trk 3] |
Copyright © 2024 Slowfoot Records
Privacy
Privacy