Architectural dancing about keyboards? Non-linear a/tonality in polyphonic space? Noodling about with the equipment?
It doesn’t really matter. Assisted by Beerglass Records of Derby, ARSEY ROB has presented the world with an inventive collection of sonic experiences. They don’t settle down into a groove, get into any rut or impose any particular mood. We have electronica from lumps of kit (no laptop here) and find it can be absorbed as fun, fascination or delirium. You decide.
A visitor from the future with my exact DNA would probably have the same feeling I get when wandering through a Victorian Civic Museum in Liverpool, Glasgow or Leeds. All manner of wonders and oddities are piled up for admiration and marvel. None of it makes a lot of sense. But it does create a fascinating glimpse of something other. The little printed labels decalring the titles are wonders in themselves: "Corrugated Flat Tubes"; Favourite Comb"; "The Golden Age of Biscuits"; and, gloriously "Prisoner 819 Did A Bad Thing". These are not titles that a self important audio poser would naturally adopt.
My listening notes suggest an interest in distant octaves – how far apart can you place two notes? They point to ARSEY ROB's need to get from a beginning to an end in the times conventionally assigned to social dancing. Two to five minutes a piece then. And the notes do indicate tune-like structures. But no obvious two three or four step. It’s more like music for an unrealised animation. In a context like a film score inconsequential oddness would no longer be the focus and its audio illusions and psychic disturbances could do their krafty werk without being noticed. The films would be quirky, wry and gently satirical.
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What I'm saying is that you could definitely use this music if you had a use for it. It's rich in texture, generous with its movement and intricate in its assembly of analogue and digital sound. Your generalist poprock fan or "music critic" would probably leave it in the racks and move through the alphabet towards something a bit more BOARDS OF CANADA.
You might even think you could do something like this yourself at home. But admit it, you didn’t. And probably couldn’t. ARSEY ROB did, and it’s quite a lot of fun.
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