Review – Untitled 10, The black album – by Textura

VA: Untitled 10 (The Black Album)
Untitled & After
The material on Untitled & After’s tenth release is rooted in techno but spreads its wings far beyond a strict minimal template. The inclusion of field recordings, ambient-dub textures, and a generally expansive approach gives the compilation a wide-screen character that extends its sights beyond the confines of the club. Two focal points emerge in virtually every case: the first a rhythm dimension; the second colourful ambient-electronic scene-painting. Untitled 10 (The Black Album) lists some stellar names as contributors, with Morgan Packard, Andrew Duke, Bizz Circuits, and Leyland Kirby amongst the better-known. Repeated exposure to the album brings into clear focus an interesting trajectory, as the material gradually distances itself from a rhythm-based approach until beats vanish entirely during the recording’s second half.
The album opener “Apple Pie” suggests Morgan Packard’s been soaking up the music of Robert Henke in recent times, a suspicion bolstered when a number of Monolake-like signifiers surface during its five-minute time in the spotlight: sleek and polished surfaces, atmospheric bass rumble, and a forward-thrusting minimal techno pulse. “Hovercraft,” a collaboration between Andrew Duke and i8u, rolls along with a breezy, lighter-than-air techno bump that conveys the movement of its titular transport, while an accompanying Chaircrusher remix infuses the original with a heavier industrial quality and cloaks it in a multi-layered cloud of hazy melodies and noxious atmosphere. Some tracks opt for a more purely ambient textural approach that excludes beats, as confirmed by lovely meditations by sublamp (“andamurmur”) and Robert Crouch and Yann Novak (“Santa Fe”). And sometimes there is truth in advertising, as “Big Air (Ambient Mix),” a cloudy collaborative piece by Jondi & Spesh with Brian Stillwater illustrates. Leyland Kirby takes the project out on a characteristically distinctive note when the stately “Ready To Go Down Together” evokes a mutant processional where fuzz-toned guitars serenade angelic choirs amidst billowing synthetic flourishes.
April 2010

Album – Comp – Untitled 10 – Various Artists on Untitled & After (2010)

| CD | UntitledandAfter | compilation

Various artists – Untitled 10

03.23.2010
Tracks:

Morgan Packard – Apple Pie
Robert Crouch – 5th of July
Andrew Duke + i8u – Hovercraft
Andrew Duke + i8u – Hovercraft (Chaircrusher Remix)
Birdcage – When Dream and Day Unite
Bizz Circuits – mouvement aérien
sublamp – andamurmur
Jondi & Spesh with Brian Stillwater – Big Air (Ambient Mix)
Robert Crouch / Yann Novak – Santa Fe
Leyland Kirby – Ready To Go Down Together
Artwork by Marc Kate

About:

For its tenth release, Untitled & After issues a compilation of music that seeks solace in the outer reaches of electronic music. Akin to Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series, Untitled 10 (The Black Album) pulls away from the structures of techno into more expansive terrain.
Collected from artists as diverse as Bizz Circuits and Morgan Packard, from locations as distant as Sapporo, Los Angeles and Berlin, Untitled 10 (The Black Album) is a meditation on the tension between force and fragility. An extension of the beat driven roots of Untitled & After, this compilation revels in the paranoid spaciousness of dub, the personal documents of field recordings and the otherworldliness of soft synthesis. Here, ambient is not a genre, but a timeless, spaceless moment. Untitled 10 (The Black Album) attempts the impossible by documenting something so fleeting.