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La Prochaine Fois is actually a movie made by
Riz Malen, who is also known as Neotropic. I have written about
the movie as well,
so you might want to read that. Therefore, this is a soundtrack.
I find that listening to the music makes a bit more sense after
seeing the visuals that this music was designed to accompany.
On the other hand, the film is subtitled An Ambient Road
Movie, so maybe you don't need the visuals. Whatever --
you decide. However, if you get the 2CD set of this release,
the film comes on one of the CD's.
Moving right along....
Neotropic makes richly textured ambient electronica. Her music
sounds less like Autechre
and more like DJ Shadow. That is: as opposed to creating her
music out of extremely heavily processed sounds, it is more
of a collage. There are recognizable elements: drum loops, the
drone of a sitar, the fuzzed out guitar of Nick McCabe, the
moaning vocals of Jarboe, etc. It's a different feel than some
electronica.
And, apparently, Malen works with these musicians directly.
Jarboe and McCabe are credited with their parts as if they recorded
them specifically for this release. In fact, McCabe gets a co-writing
credit on the pieces he worked on. So do Low, who are also on
the album. It's a veritable star-fest. Even Brian Dougans is
credited with helping on the film (which annoys me because he
should be working on that next F.S.O.L. album and not goofing
off with a camera!)
I know that a certain portion of the people who bother to read
this review will be fans of the guest musicians, so i'll talk
about them first. Micro-cosmic is a "re-work" of Do
You Waltz by Low. Low fans will remember that Neotropic
was involved on the Owl: Low remixed album, and
here she once again takes a Low song and twists it into something
entirely different. I am not familiar with this particular Low
song, but i am guessing that it does not include the intense
distortion and echo that you hear in this version. It's a nice
enough little song i guess. After the largely vocal-less album,
Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker's clear voices really stand out
nicely. Plus, there is a really beautiful little piano bit.
Was that in the Low song, or did Neotropic add it? I dunno,
but it's a nice accompaniment to the voices and the wavering
guitars.
Verve's Nick McCabe does very nicely as well. He turns in one
guitar part that is used on Cornershop Candy, Train
To Katoomba, and The Man Who Catches Clouds. These
three tracks are, i think, my favorites on the disc. McCabe's
guitar ebbs and flows under intense distortion and manipulation
from Malen. Cornershop Candy features McCabe's guitar
chiming next to Jarboe's wavering voice. The song fades into
Train To Katoomba, which features the same guitar lick
now accompanied by some wavering vocal tones and hesitant beats.
A really nice wandering tune. The Man Who Catches Clouds
pairs McCabe's riff with some floating horns.
Ex-Swan Jarboe lends her darkly rich voice to the aforementioned
Cornershop Candy. I like her vocals here -- her voice
is slightly buried in the mix of guitar and subdued beats. It
really works well.
A standout track that does not involve a "special guest
star" is Still. This is a song of looped drums,
string sweeps, non-lyrical female vocals, and sitar drone. Something
about the beat in this song combined with the sampled voice
and the strings forces me to think of Movietone.
I keep expecting the vocals to take shape as another pretty
tune from Kate Wright. And yet this song is WAY more energetic
than Movietone. At any rate, this is my favorite track on the
disc.
My least favorite track on the disc is Memories, which
is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it features female rapping
that REALLY stands out on this disc. The vocals from Jarboe
and Low are both very subdued and really fit in with the general
washed-out ambient sound, but the rapping is in the forefront,
and thus really sticks out as an oddity. Secondly, well, it's
not in the movie. I listened for it, and at no time in the film
did i hear rapping. Wierd. It's almost as if this track was
tacked on to the end of the soundtrack to lengthen it and make
it into an "album". I dunno, but it seems out of place to me.
On the whole though, this is decent ambient music. It makes
good background noise, and yet is richly textured enough to
warrant deeper listening.
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