JOSHUA TREBLE

Five Point Fincastle

CD / intr_version

I keep thinking about taking out a subscription to intr_version records, because it sure develops to be one of my most favourite electronica record labels. This is the third release on that label that I will review and it made it into my stack of favourite records that I keep close to my record player without further ado or rethinking. Like the CDs by Ghislain Poirier and by Vitamins For You before it. That starts with the design and packaging, from the graphics to the sewed bottom. And it definitely doesn’t end when it reaches the music. I’ll repeat what I said about Vitaminsforyou, though that might be a little unfair, but it fits well: it is the warmth, the emotionality, the organic flow and the atmosphere of humanity rather than being confronted with the sound of machines, that gives life to the music on “Five Point Fincastle”. For the same reason it is more pleasant to sit in a green pasture and listen to the sounds of nature than to sit on a bench next to a busy street and listen to the sound of the traffic (though both has something to it, I must say), but I am drifting away again. Sure, use this CD to blank out the noise of the urban city you live in or to fill the voids modern life has left in your own existence, but that means taking advantage of the record. And losing a major point in the artistic value (you heard me right) of this CD.

In contrast to most CDs from or in the field of electronic music, Joshua Treble (aka Tony Boggs) takes a high amount of construction or even composition to produce these tracks. They span over great lengths and over a large variety of sounds. The overall feeling is delicate and melancholic, like a beautiful girl suffering from lovesickness, but like the highs and lows of emotionally disturbing times, the results may vary from isometrically balanced joylessness to extreme waves of raging emotions. Musically, that means simply that what starts one place will end at an absolutely different place and will have come there by a way so unexpected yet strikingly natural that your jaw will drop in awe. There are a lot of epic soundscapes and majestically arranged field-recordings as well as smaller sized places and sounds, but during the whole CD the sound design is intricately woven and spunned to draw you in. It is hard to trace back these sounds to their origins, until you wish it weren’t computerprocessed sounds, but rather sounds produced by organic players. Even the digital trickery and destructive filters blurring and whizzing over acoustic guitars start to sound like natural sounds, especially when the ephemeral, angellike vocals set in on “I was there for the last kiss but never saw the ambulance leave.”[1] Or like the modern chamber ensemble practicing string picking behind those factory walls all recorded from very very far away on a beach with the waves breaking in on “Stranded”. (Those aforementioned vocals belong to Jenna Robertson, vocalist for Avia Gardner.)

In a lot of ways these tracks remind me of Tortoise. The deepness of thought, the introspection into the sounds and their connection to one another, the sometimes harsh and at other times harmonizing and organically growing construction of musical parts into one track, all of that were main points that made postrock so interesting and great. All of these main points were soon lost in an over theorizing, self-cantered maelstrom of artistic aspirations and mainly the loss of the wisdom that music, finally, always has to bring some joy and enjoyment. To the audience, that is, and not only to the musicians showing off their elitist lifestyle and worldview. I hope this won’t happen to Joshua Treble nor electronic music in all. On the other hand, the way I still fondly remember those first Tortoise EPs and MiniLps, I will always regard this album as one of the truly great ones.