Title: Imp
Artist: Sejectiøn
Release Date: 2014 Feb 3
Genre: Glitch / IDM
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Label: Otium
Introduction
What happens when you take three musicians, three guitars, some drum loops and pads, and just let them play? Answer: you get three days of Sejectiøn improv. And, we get a compilation of some of the best parts of those improvisations on Imp.
Three Days of Sejectiøn Improv
So Sejectiøn consists of members of the St. Petersberg based øutsider clup, and Abjective – a duo of brothers based out of London. To quote the Abjection website for this release:
A new joint project of Abjective and creative project øutsider clup represents experimental guitar rock recorded at the first attempt. There are no mistakes as the music is pure improvisation.
Which brings us to this point: don’t expect the work on this release to have standard structures, or lyrics, or a heavily produced sound. None of those things are factors in this type of release.
This is about pure musicality. It’s about a group of artists finding themselves in a new context. It’s about how the communicate with each other, and how they interact to produce a type of sound.
As music has moved to more electronic means of recording and production improvisation has become more of a lost art form. Don’t take this the wrong way, there are still groups that improvise, but they are mostly relegated to being “jam bands” or are treated as being on the outer fringe of music these days. And on top of all this, most of the “genres” (I won’t go into that rant again) of music today are typically statically defined — they aren’t well-defined in terms of how an artist can improvise within them (for that matter, many of them don’t have the space for variation in performances — especially EDM, in my opinion).
Well, this is where Sejectiøn challenges some of that. They work in styles that are more modern, like glitch, down-tempo and trip hop. This is the kind of development that needs to happen in this style of music. We need to see that it’s still about artists performing, and not about rote reproduction of sounds laid out in a studio.
And that, to me is what makes this an interesting work. It’s all about the musicians, the performance and communication. It’s about taking concepts that seemed to be mostly lost, and extending them into new styles. It’s about moving forward, and not just standing still.
Conclusion
I enjoy this release quite a bit. I think there is something to be said for artists that are willing to take a risk and explore concepts and ideas in a way that is new, and allows them to remove the limitations. This is a release that takes risks, that removes boundaries. What is in it is more of what the listener hears, and not what some pre-defined pop sensibility says should be in the work. Listen to it yourself, you may just find something of value.
Sejectiøn: Imp
Free / €3 EUR (or more)
7.5
Pros
- Otium release is free
- Abjective release is €3 EUR (or more)
