Sunday 1 May 2011

NOT A TEEPEE

There's a lot of noise out there, as Stanley Clarke once said.  The internet is now so saturated with voices clamouring for your attention that it resembles a gigantic, digital market square, with millions upon millions of vendors bellowing about their wares.  There's an awful lot of chaff and not so much wheat, so it's important that we pick out those voices in the crowd who have something genuinely interesting and worthwhile to offer.  One such voice is that of the bizarrely-named Not A Teepee.

The brainchild of dutch musician John Hekert, Not A Teepee is a growing collective of musicians and artists who release an online concept album every couple of months.  Each album is based around a theme chosen by the collective, and it is this which acts as inspiration for the music and artwork contributed to the project.  To date, Not A Teepee has released four such albums, and their respective themes have been as varied as "mud", "vikings", "Ada Lovelace" and "silver".  Each artist interprets this theme as they see fit, which has led to a pleasingly diverse range of music on each release, as well as some killer album covers.  The artists themselves, while for the most part based in Scotland, are a cosmopolitan bunch; a cursory glance at the collective's Facebook page indicates that their current location is "SCOTLAND/NETHERLANDS/FRANCE/EVERYWHERE!".

I'm somewhat late to the party on this one, so what I'll do here is summarise the first four albums and then review each new release individually as it comes out.  Not A Teepee has thus far been a veritable melting pot of musical ideas, and while there are too many artists involved to list here, a few special mentions are in order to demonstrate the breadth of styles represented on these first four albums.  The collective's music runs the gamut from the dream-folk psychadelia of the Kitchen Cynics to the stark, looped soundscapes of Iliop.  Tim Courtney's mournful croon and shimmering arpeggios jostle for attention with Fiona Keenan's gritty modern folk songs, whilst Hekert himself flits between heart-wrenching acoustic balladry and ominous industrial noise.  There's much variation in the contributions of individual artists, too; Les Pelicans progress from jittery indie-afro rhythms on their first track to a humorous banjo ditty on their second, and How Deep Is The Valley's oppressive synthesizers and jazzy rhythms give way to tribal drumming, electronica and stripped-down acoustic guitar across these inital releases.

I know that you're all weary web-wanderers, living in an age where time is at a premium and information is force-fed to you on a minutely basis, but one of the more interesting quirks of the net's saturation is that word-of-mouth seems to have made a comeback.  When attempting to sift through all that noise you need reliable recommendations, and as such I'm giving you one.  Not A Teepee is very much worth your time and attention, and long may it continue to stand out from the crowd.

Music is available for streaming and free download at http://notateepee.bandcamp.com/, and you can also find the collective on Facebook.

2 comments:

  1. Excellent post Sir! i'm particularly enjoying Tim Courtney - These Silver Darlings and Seas, Starry - Silfur. Wonderfully hazy and atmospheric.

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  2. Thanks, Ross! Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff on there. I used to be involved with the Aberdeen music scene, so I knew there were some bright talents lurking around up there.

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