Title: Dreamclub
Artist: No Curfew Kids
Genre: Ambent/Drone/Experimental
Artist Reaction: n/a
Genre Reaction: Hard to say. Ambient is good, drone can be good. Experimental is always a crapshoot for me. Could be great, could be terrible, could be mystifying.
Familiarity: Zero though I’ve listened to MTR’s albums before
Suggested by: Who else?
Fill the Room With Light: Sounds kind of ambient with humming droning keyboard, getting louder and I guess that’s the percussion behind it? Short, as most of the tracks here seem to be, clocking in around the 1 or 2 minute mark. I guess I’d call that either a drone or an intro, as it was pretty much just the one chord held throughout the short track.
Dreamclub: Slowly building kind of hollow drumbeats with the melody building quietly up behind the beat, repetitive and I get the impression this, or most of it, will be instrumental? Pleasant enough, quite ambient again.
Squash: Harsher this time, seems to be a lot of feedback on synth and guitar, drums are very sparse and almost mechanical-sounding.
Huit: Slow, lush type synth with so far no percussion, low feedback or could be more sounds on the synth. I feel this may be a one-man project? Short again. The next track isn’t.
Squadron: One of only two tracks that go over the two-minute mark, this is six, and starts off with what sounds like a steam locomotive with a drone synth sounding a little like a church organ. I should hopefully be able to say a little more about this one as the other so far have been too short for me to formulate an opinion on them. Metallic, rolling sound effects possibly make the train sound like its going through a tunnel? Not sure: it’s called “Squadron” so I would have thought sounds of flight might have been more expected, but anyway. Kind of oriental little bell sounds, and we’re about halfway through. Some sort of riff being played now, almost like a siren or klaxon or something, or computer game music? Really hard to say what Tristan’s going for here, but it all sounds pretty well executed.
Untethered: Back to the short tracks, and they get progressively shorter for the next three. This is just over a minute, and has squarky synths (squarky? It’s a name I made up to describe those sort of squelching, honking sounds synth music sometimes make) with another possible link to computer gaming? Again it’s pretty repetitive, though that’s drone for you I guess. Some other sounds there too, so it’s well put together, just not a lot of it really.
All Time: This just barely edges the minute mark, and appears to be more computer game-style music, with loud percussion and electronic sound effects. Sort of gives me the idea of robots on a production line, perhaps getting ready to rebel against their cruel human masters?
Eyelash:And this doesn’t even get to the minute mark. A repeating tone, cutting on and off, with what sounds like drops of metal water hitting a wood floor. Huh? Yeah well, you try describing this. I’m doing the best I can.
Bright and Early: Another drone I guess, shimmering and humming but sort of not really doing a lot.
Devoid/devout: The last track is the longest, at seven minutes. Seems to have a basic riff going as it starts, mid-paced percussion, some form of melody running through it. Something like steam-driven cylinders or pistons, a lot of ticking percussion too. Kind of a staggered, staccato thing going on in the fourth minute. Fading away to nothing now and slipping back in on guitar, I think, with a sort of almost nursery-rhyme melody, possibly very (very) soft hummed vocal, though I could be imagining that.
Conclusion: Not really my thing, but I can see there was a lot of work put into this, and if it is Tristan on his own, that’s pretty impressive.
So, Love or Hate? I’ll stretch to giving this a
Like.