#471 Luomo - Vocal City

Off some list of the aughts.

Initially, I was pretty unimpressed with this album. Why did I look this up again? Turns out it’s a real hit among certain crowds, and on a quest to figure out why I dug deeper and deeper in to the writing to be found online about it. Try it for yourself, you won’t have to look far to find aficionados typing breathlessly about the effect it had on various movements, the ways that it drove a nascent micro-house movement, the kind of scene it created at raves and parties, the way that it blended this sub-sub-genre with that. If you say so, guess you had to be there.

I’m trying to avoid making this a commentary about the commentary, but I can’t escape from it. So, on one hand, I admit an ignorance to the context of this album an ignorance that is about to (spoiler alert) make me give a middling score to an album revered by its adherents. On the other hand, I can help but notice blind spots in said adherents, where people note the use of clipped samples and textured tones, as if these weren’t things that had been pretty thoroughly explored by instrumental hip hop, ambient and experimental subgenres of all kinds. And apparently vocals were a big innovation. I’d be more impressed if I’d never heard Endtroducing, Moon Safari, Neu, or any ambient music ever . I know these aren’t the same thing, but if putting a 4/4 underneath well-worn tricks is all it takes to be groundbreaking then house was even more stale than I thought circa the turn of the century. More than one commentator tries to convince you not to be scared off by the long track lengths, which run roughly 10-15 minutes. Raver please. That constitutes a noteworthy song length? I’m being a snarky shithead and I know it, so might as well double down: if this album strikes you as groundbreaking you are listening to way, way too narrow a slice of music.

Now ok, I’ll back it down. I guess if the main thing you’re looking for is something that can get played at a rave, apparently this was new stuff, and more power to that. I rarely look for dancability in music, and I concede that combining well-worn tricks never previously made danceable into something that is, in fact, danceable, is a nice innovation for that set. And its entirely possible that I'm prejudiced against it because so many of its tricks have become so mainstream in the last 12 years.

The actual album, right, right. It’s fine. It evolves slowly, has some silky, subtle changes, and generally rides the hell out of a groove, for better or worse. Don’t expect a lot of surprises here, there’s nothing that would snap you out of your reverie, and plenty to build it up, lots of little details down between the beats when your head wants to reach for them. And I'll certainly concede some great moments: halfway through Class a dirty synth line rolls in and bounces off the bass and clattering beats, its actually pretty sick. Hell, if I wanted to sit around getting high bobbing rhythmically, this probably wouldn’t be a bad choice, actually 3.5/5

You might like this if: you want to dance and space out and have a soundscape to do it in, this is a perfectly good, dense-but-spare prickly piece of beats to do it in