ACCELERA DECK

Pop polling

CD, scarcelight

Accelera Deck is one of the pseudonyms of Chris Jeely who somehow starts to complete a circle that has begun with him playing in a band that was inspired by My Bloody Valentine and from there started a career in electronic noise experimentalism that led him to artists as diverse as EBSK, Birchville Cat Motel, Merzbow and Chuck Bettis as well starting the scarcelight record label and the floodlight distribution for likewise records. “Pop polling” is following high on the heels of the gigantic and as gigantically constructed “sunstrings EP” (which was not an EP by all means, but read for yourself). The mid-part of the “sunstrings EP”, which was squeezed between to enormous blocks of white noise squall, might have been giving it away. On “pop polling” Jeely focuses on softer and more delicate sounds. They are still noisy and distorted, but the construction is gentle and almost intimate. And that is the return to his beginnings, sort of.

Some tracks flitter and glimmer like dust in the sunlight, e.g. “Passerine”. Others squiggle and twist like little fish. Others foray deftly into the area of noise, like the aptly named “Sunskull” (I really was thinking of Sunno))) mixed with Merzbow when I frist heard it) Some do all of this at the same time. Then there is the epic “lips” at over twelve minutes, the longest track on the record, starting with a mass of feedback drone and drenching itself and the listener in overwhelming amp- and guitar noise, and staying that way. This track could be regarded as earsplitting noise, but in its clarity and straightforwardness, it being among those tracks were the guitar is easily identified, it is still far from what you might have heard before from Accelera Deck. Moreover it still has that human quality that is stretching over the whole length of the record, which might come from the fluidity and almost liquid composure of the music. The same is true for the equally harsh “sunskulls”. The diversity and construction of the tracklist is another hint at the idea that Jeely wanted to make a pop-record here. Using the guitar as the only source of sound is another one (guitar > basic pop music instrument there is, that’s obvious isn’t it?).

Most of the tracks remain in the interesting structure of multi-layered, processed guitar sounds, that perambulate between glitches and scratching of strings, though. “Lips” and “sunskulls” form one side if the aural spectrum laid down here. The other is the intricate and silent “Piezo”, which seems to crawl into itself with time. Within all that variety, the best thing about it is still how melodies – yes, real melodies – start to peel themselves from the sounds as if by magic.

Is it drone? Is it ambient? Who cares, if you are all about filing music into genres, you might be wrong here anyhow. Me, I regularly have to crawl through stacks of unsorted CDs – metal leaning next to songwriters, experimental avant-garde freeform noise lying on top of New-Wave-compilations – but I am sure that this is one point that has held my ears open for anything that is out there to come. Often enough I wish I was able to dive into sound as deeply as Chris Jeely does on here, really exploring a certain sound into its depth, finding its hidden frequencies and slowly twisting and turning it into something else. But time constraints have a heavy grip on me (that’s also why some of these reviews around here are so late, uhm …) and then there is so much new stuff to be discovered. Some people are afraid of that, those are wrong here also. Aural adventerousness is not for everyone, or actually only for a small minority of people. If you belong to those, you are welcome.