Title: Expectation
Artist
: SCD
Release Date: 20 March 2014
Genre: Experimental Indietronic
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Label: MNMN Records

Never Rush Expectations: Blast From The Past

I’ve been on something of a roll with releases from MNMN Records.  First with their Snowy Compilation, and then with Winter from Electric Abstract Technicumm.  Could this be the third release that I really like from MNMN, or has their luck run out?  Well, the only thing I can say is: never rush expectations.

So, when I put on this release, I was hit immediately with sounds and textures that just didn’t feel right to me.  I would have thought this was a release from the 2000’s, and not from an artist in 2014.  If I had to guess, I would have thought this was an IDM release from the Kahvi Collective about 2008 by say Abyssal Plains or Acrilic Colors.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love those artists — a lot.   So much that they are in my collection to play on The CerebralMix.  And, in fact, they are among some of the earliest artists I listened to, and in their way set some of my earliest expectations for new electronic music and what netlabels are capable of releasing.

A Funny Thing

But then this funny thing happened: I got to track five, ‘Expectation’ and I thought I was listening to a different release.  Well almost.  There was still a lot of staccato counterpoint, and similarity to the arrangements of the previous tracks.  But now, the main featured instruments were guitars and drums.  This was no longer the heavily synthesizer / sample based release I had just been listening to.

It was, in fact, so surprising that I had to look and make certain that I was still listening to the same release.  In fact, I would find out that I was definitely still listening to the same release when the next track mixed the guitar textures of ‘Expectation’ with some of the keyboard textures used in the first four tracks of this release.

So, it turns out that SCD is a bit of a stylistic vagabond.  Wandering between more electronic textures and organic textures, while changing and varying his style for each track.

I really found myself more attracted to the last three tracks on this release, than I did to the first four.  The only misgiving I had during these three tracks was the section of ‘Expectation’ where the percussion just about downs out everything else, it seemed a bit superfluous and non-idiomatic use of percussion sounds.

My Impressions

If I were to say that I had an overall impression of this release, it would be that SCD is on the search for something new.  Trying to fuse different textures, styles and structures to come up with something unique.  There is a lot of work going on in here, a lot of invention (in the musical sense), and a lot of experimentation with ideas.

I hope I get to hear a future release that has fermented a bit more, and realizes how to fuse these ideas together in a more consistent manner instead of feeling like there are two mini-releases packaged into a single release.  I feel like the track ‘Never Rush’ comes the closest reaching this goal (although it suffers from a similar issue with over-indulgence of cymbals that bothered me on ‘Expectation’).

SCD: Expectation

Free
7.5

Rating

7.5/10

Posted by George De Bruin