PORT ROYAL – Dying in Time
(CD, n5md)
The third album of the Italian
post-rock / ambient / electronic / whatever collective Port Royal is another
shining diamond in a sea of boring releases in this genre, all of which are
polished to death by what is possible to do with a simple laptop and some
software nowadays. But what no computer can add to the art is the heart and
soul that is necessary to create something worthwhile. This is where vision
and talent come in, and you cannot download that. You got to have it. Port
Royal have it.
Sometimes I think that there
should be a restriction nowadays that allows people to only create some
limited time or megabytes of new music per month, maybe that would help to
make all these producers give a little more thought on what they are doing
instead of just churning out piece after piece, clogging up bandwidth and
taking up disc-space around the world. Well, I guess this kind of
productivity is still better than all those people going out and having all
kinds of stupid ideas. I think I can handle better a few hundred more
bedroom producers of shitty ambient electronic than a few hundred happy
slappers or skinheads. But listen to me, I am ranting again.
Well, anyway, what I wanted to
say was that Port Royal are the complete opposite and a pleasure to hang on
to. Despite having spent the time between their last album “Afraid To
Dance” by remixing Ladytron and Felix Da Housecat, they seem to have
become even more introspective and careful in their compositions. As
tonebuilders they are setting each note, each drumbeat, each little noise to
accompany the atmosphere with high precision and after having pondered the
advantages and disadvantages versus any other kind of alternative. They are
entering the realm of serious audio artists such as Radian or other
electronic musicians that have a more architectural approach to music
instead of a pop-oriented one. But on top they add melodies and more
melodies.
The tracks on “dying in
time” spread out over time instead of evolving linear like regular tracks.
They create atmospheres that range from shoegazing bliss to minimal techno
beats. It is quite a stretch. In between they return the intelligent to IDM
or seem to somehow make the time stand still. But in the course of the album
everything comes organically together and seems to fit as it should. The
music is compact and shining and liquid and dynamic at the same time. Some
kind of magic, for sure.
During the beginning of the
track “nights in kiev” I had a blast because that first synthie sound
reminded me a lot of the old Italo-Techno we was listening to as teens back
in the Eighties, and if you remember that you are old, like me. I mean the
time when the costs of synthesizers was indirectly proportional to the
intelligence of what was made with them. Some of these musicians (I dare not
call them artists) spent billions of Lira on synthesizers and then came up
with “Visitors” and such. Anyway, the moment only lasts for a few
seconds, because Port Royal manage to mix this sort of craziness into a
track that at the same time contains soothing shoegaze atmospheres and has a
bass-heavy techno beat and, which is most important, sounds good and makes
sense.
