LIFE IS FULL OF POSSIBILTIES is the third album released by Dntel, the electronic project of Jimmy Tamborello, in 2001, and has become Dntel's most successful release. But is it good?
This is an album I found out about after looking into the production credits for GIVE UP by the postal service, one of my favourite records ever. So, I find this guy, look up what his biggest album is and throw it on. I didn't really know what to expect, but it was way better than I could have imagined.
The record opens with "Umbrella", which leads with chopped and screwed vocals, over a rising synthesizer, with stumbling precussion stumbling over the track. The vocals get more chopped up, and disappear for a while. When they return, the beat finally establishes itself over the fully formed synth. There's so much to listen to in the background, which is something you'll find alot on this record. The voice then floats, disembodied, until the track ends.
"Anywhere anyone" is immediately reminscent of GIVE UP, the drowned sounds looping are nearly dead ringers for parts of that record. This track features a female vocalist, who repeats the motif "I love you- how can you love me if you don't love yourself?" the track introduced a xylophone like arpeggio into the mix too, the whole thing is just incredibly pretty. The chopping effects on the vocals are so well executed, it's great. And even from there, the track has more sonic and lyrical progress to make. Tracks like the first two on this record really take you to a whole other dimension, I imagine they'd be even better if you were high.
Track 3 is alot more chilled out. So chilled, in fact, that not a whole lot even happens at all for the 3:30 runtime. So i guess the title of "pillowcase" is appropriate because this song puts me to sleep.
Fear of corners picks up the momentum again with a weird idm beat at the start and what could be velcro ripping, with pondering background synths. The track develops and becomes more skittery, but also introduced enveloping baclground synths. Like I said, it's worth listening to the background as well as the foreground on this record. I wish it developed a bit more but it's a fine track. "Suddenly is sooner than you think" followed this, and I'm joining the paragraphs because the tracks seemlessly flow under the sounds of a crowd talking. The female vocalist on this track is pensive and melancholic, barely saying "I cried as if my tears//Would bring you back to me". The track has this radio interference and weird accordian or horn like sound, before this rush of soft white noise that really picks up the track, literally. Glitchy synth motifs sit on top, disorientatingly, before returning to quiet clicking. and then quiet.
The title track follows this up, and the first half isn't particularily interesting, at all. Towards the latter end it introduces some awkward acoustic guitar plucking which makes it slightly bareable, with some synth bits too, but man, for a title track this is dull. 6 and a half minutes too? jesus....
The next three tracks on the album are easily the best three. "why I'm so unhappy" kicks off the trilogy with more guitar, sweeping synths and another female vocal, Her lyrics here are pretty good too. The track has a really glitchy aesthetic, and the beat is good too. The vocals repeat alot until they get to a point where these just tear themselves apart, and it's a genuinely harrowing moment as the normal vocals continue beneath this ultra noisey vocal singing the same thing back, and really shows Tamborello's ability to produce off.
The next track is "fireworks" and before some stumbling it organises into a pretty good beat. The atmosphere created consistently by the background synths on the record is here again, as well as what sounds like glasses clanging in the foreground. The main body of the track is a really good minimalist dance piece, before getting bored of it's own lack of ambition and devolving to crashing precussive and electronic noise, and doesn't properly recover, almost like it's scarred. The track then releases the afforementioned fireworks by the end.
"(This is) The dream of Evan and Chan" is probably the best song on the album. Featuring death cab for cutie and the postal service's Ben Gibbard, it starts of with super distorted noise beat until a proper beat emerges from almost nowhere. The track is utterly melancholic, the beat hammers the electronics down. I don't know what it is but Gibbard's final verse of "Your eyelashes tickled my neck with every nervous blink, And it was perfect until the telephone started Ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing off". The track is just great, and it's not hard to see how Gibbard and Tamborello carried this musical chemistery to a whole record. It's just a really, really great song.
The last song, called "last songs", evokes boards of canada with it's acoustic parts and general approach, but the frail strings in the background give the track it's own identity too. It has cool organ parts too, I think it's trying to mimic conventions of "last songs" on records, which it does pretty well. It wraps the album up nicely.
Overall, the record was pretty good. It felt conceptual but still had tracks that could stand solidly on their own. Apart from a few self indulgent passages it was really good, and I loved Evan and Chan. Looking forward to trying to track one of these down IRL when this funnyvirus quarantine is over.
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