Katie Gately - Color
2016
No joke; I had an entire long-form review 80% done on this album, but ended up thinking my approach was boring as ****, frankly. I was rambling on about the difference between traditional 12-tone harmonically centered compositon and texturally oriented music like a lot of ambient, electronica and drone music.
It was boring, frankly, so I'm starting over. In it, I mentioned how I very clearly don't come from the same place as Frownland and Mondo Bungle when it comes to music. Both of these guys seem heavily oriented towards the very thing that I don't much appreciate: Music where texture and "feel" takes place over more traditional ("conservative" if you will) ideas of what the "content" of a composition/piece lies in.
It seems odd to me that I like this Katie Gately album so much, just as it seems odd to me that I like Jenny Hval and Holly Herndon. They all make quite texturally oriented electronic music that really wouldn't work as well if, for example, converted to cellos and piano instead. The
sound of these tracks are arguably more important than the strict compositional, 12-tone oriented contents of them.
Katie Gately isn't quite as far away from what I usually like as the much more texturally oriented Holly Herndon, but the feel - and occasional cacophony - of her sounds are a very, very important element in her appeal.
I feel like this album (Color) manages to constantly draw me back in with whirling melodies and interesting chord or key changes just when the soundscapes are about to lose me. The album keeps me right at the edge of my musical comfort zone, one foot firmly placed in familiar territory at all times. I think this album, as well as albums by Jenny Hval and Holly Herndon, might one day teach me how to see music more like Frownland and Mondo Bungle - at least partially - sees it.
There's a mere 7 tracks on this Katie Gately album, but it's still over 41 minutes long. I feel like there's a clear idea behind every track, but you can expect to hear a variety of sounds and voices in the mix in every track. I love how the second track on the album uses both a key change and textural changes to make a recurring hook feel very different late in the track.
The album slides from almost mellow beats to walls of noise and voice. There's a brittle quality to a lot of the mixing on the album, which I remember turned me off at first, but I learned to love it with repeat listens.
It seems pointless to try and describe the individual tracks here. They all fit vaguely withing the sphere of electronic music that plays with synths, samples and voices. You could say there's a poppy element to the album, as you can point to some legit vocal hooks in some tracks. The album ebbs and flows in intensity, feel and texture, but never strays from something that sits right between the conventional and the forward looking. This is not avant-garde.
I had this album on my best of 2016 list. It's odd that I still haven't quite settled on what I think about this album, two years later. This must have to do with how it's still only 50% within my musical comfort zone. At the same time, I can legitemately appreciate most of what the album does and I think there's some fantastic moments on the album. It effortlessly keeps me interested on some level. I could spin it all day and still feel like I'm discovering new details and vibes in these 7 compositions. It seems that I wouldn't like this, but I do. Quite a bit. A future gatweay album to another perspective on music? Perhaps. I doubt it. Time will tell.