Arovane - Icol Diston
Here I was, excited about a new Arovane CD, and it turns out that the CD release of Icol Diston is actually a hard plastic compilation of three 12-inches from a few years ago. Exactingly mastered to preserve some of that breathy quality and scratch factor of vinyl, the CD version of Icol Diston is a delight for those of us in the audience who haven't been keeping up with the 12-inch releases. The extra bonus is that Uwe Zahn's work as Arovane ages incredibly well.
Glitch without being metallic, analog without being dated, Icol Diston is warm, organic head music. Filled with sputtering tempos and haphazard melodic ideas which skitter and flit around your head, these 11 tracks showcase Zahn's compositional abilities to fabricate sonic atmospheres which breathe and move. These are heady, oxygen-rich environments.
"I.O." makes me feel like I am a fish, floating above a grid of thermal vents, rising and floating in the upswell of warm bubbles, surrounded by darting schools of tiny, jeweled fish and lost among a field of slender, fluttering anemone. "Parf" shifts me to a tidal pool on a Pacific Ocean shore, the pounding pattern of the waves a distant roar which permeates the rhythms of the track without being obdurate. "Torn" ascends skyward, driven by a beat-pattern that leaves the softer, more restful, watery places behind. Think the straining muscles of an aquatic bird as it pushes itself away from the water, droplets streaming off its feathers. "Andar" begins with a tiny glitch pattern like the repetitive sound of a raven working a snail shell against a rock. The melody from "Torn" meanders in the background (there is a consistent melodic thread which runs through most of the tracks which make up the i.o. EP, furthering the impression that the entire record is one unbroken journey). Other glitch elements creep in as if our sonic diameter has increased, allowing us to hear the rhythmic motion of other creatures as they pound and flex and chatter.
"Icol Diston" is an abrupt cessation of song, a 19-second burst of compressed sound which shoves us away from the warm embrace of these landscapes. This is the beginning of the second EP's worth of material and, while the organic melodies which soothed us on the earlier tracks are still present, the beats are more evident. "Yua:E" scampers along like something gone astray from a Boards of Canada record, a wriggling, scampering beat without the attached samples of childhood memories. Arovane's take on innocence through musical explorations isn't hampered by the heavy-handed reminder of childhood joy and, as a result, the track feels looser and much more filled with delight. "Icol Vern" bursts with a scatter of machine noise, a fax transmission split down the middle, before finding its pace as mood music for a neon triggered skyline. "Nacrath" moves like light pulses across a fog-covered sky, the city shifting and morphing behind the mist barrier. There is that eternal sense of movement running through the material from the Icol Diston EP, a fluidity which charges the second half of this CD. "Acval" retreats into glitch terrain, burrowing underground and throwing us into the fiber optic pathways which run beneath the city streets. This is high-speed data, flickering on and off in complete disregard for the tonal melody which drifts around it. Zahn threads the delicate melody through the rapid push and pull of the flickering beats, making "Acval" simultaneously placid and frantic.
Icol Diston ends with the two tracks from the Außen Vor 12-inch, both of which are remixes from the library of other artists. The "No. 8 amx" is a 13-minute version of the nearly eight-minute version on the 12-inch, the extra five minutes being nothing more than the sound of the record needle going round and round. It took me a bit to realize this probably wasn't planned, but the soothing sound of the needle in that last groove isn't terribly out of place. Not as melodic, sure, but still in keeping with the warmth of the previous hour of music.
I'm paging through his discography right now as I finish listening to Icol Diston and I'm realizing that my knowledge of Arovane isn't nearly as complete as I thought it was. Which makes me all that more happy to add this record to my collection. Thanks to Din Records for compiling the pieces into one compact collection; that process makes it easier for all of us to get lost in the fabulous work that Uwe Zahn has done as Arovane. Highly recommended.
Arovane
Din Records [2002]
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