Ted Milton & Loopspool - Sublime
"Sublime" is a collaboration between the London-based post-post-Punk poet Ted Milton, best known for his work in the Eighties with Blurt and Tied & Tickled Trio's own Andreas Gerth, AKA Loopspool, with Couch/Blond man Michael Heilrath bringing his bass into the mix too. The tracks were painstakingly assembled from remailed tapes between London, Landsberg in Germany and Weilheim in Austria, and the results are occasionally both moving and unsettling.
Loopspool has dubbed the resulting tracks of vocals and music into a squelching, spluttering, shimmering mix, several times over by the sound of it, and refined it down into something which has resemblances to the studio tricks of Tarwater, and some of the same atmosphere of ennui too. Milton's words are often odd, occasionally touching in their conversational decadence, even drifting into French for the Baudelairian miniatures "L'Alpiniste", which benefits from a strange collection of dripping and squittering noise underneath, and the ticking lo-fi Electro Dub'n'beats "C'est Ta Faute". He has one of those distinctive voices in the mould of Andy Fairly or Tom Waits in spoken word mode, or maybe even Ken Nordine, and honks a meanly squarking sax into the bargain, adding a further layer of emotional resonance to the already fairly desolate poetry.
This album has to be one of the more peculiar collaborations around, certainly deserving of multiple close auditions to dwell breifly in the descriptions, the resonances and disappointments of a few psychic skirmishes. All this and the tirelessly languid music, which makes a subtle backdrop and accompaniment to Milton in his reflections and matter-of-fact descriptions of love, lust and melancholy. "The Room" is perhaps the best example of the slow Electronica and warm bass tones making a counterpoint to the softly-delivered outline of a chamber with resonances of loss, or the bitter "I've Stolen All Of Your Being", where the album rides out on a hynotic pulse and a repeated statement of the apparent vampiric facts.
An unusual, effective and fascinating blend of Electronica with schadenfreude, told like Milton sees it through terms of disillusionment - but don't let this put anyone off. "Sublime" is not quite that, but on the way maybe.
-Antron S. Meister-