As I slowly and apprehensively work my way back towards regular blogging after a prolonged absence, I'm reminded of just how long that absence has been by the number of releases put out by the consistently great Not A Teepee collective in the interim. They have, in fact, released three mini-albums during the time that I've been otherwise occupied with deeply worthy academic study, so for the sake of efficiency (and laziness), I've opted to review the first two of those releases together. These are Found Sounds (released April 2012) and Floorfillers (released June 2012).
Musically, Found Sounds is characterised by the sampling suggested by its name. Three of the record's four tracks make heavy use of crackly voice samples and white noise, meaning that the album sometimes makes for a difficult listen, but there are still riches to be unearthed by the persevering listener. The jarring street sounds and vocal clips of It Is A New Day's Going Home give way to reverbed guitar arpeggios, sequenced beats and organ swells, making for a hypnotic combination. The synthesised abstraction of Matricarians' Hilversum (My Father's Old Radio) hints at a central theme that no-one is playing, buried amongst a clutch of random radio clips, while Kitchen Cynics' Record Your Own Voice Record, 1960's might well just be doing what it says on the tin, albeit with a modicum of manipulation, featuring as it does a series of eerie audio snippets. Erase After Listening by Katerwaul is the final song on the record, and bucks the trend of the preceding tracks by featuring nothing in the way of sampling. Rather, a variety of background noise is created whilst tremulous voice and hammered piano chords sustain a tense, ethereal atmosphere somewhat reminiscent of the work of Anathema. It forms a rather beautiful end to what is undoubtedly one of the collective's more challenging releases.
Not A Teepee release albums on a bi-monthly basis, and so by the start of June, Floorfillers was already available to stream and download. Very much in the eclectic tradition of the collective, it sounds nothing like its predecessor, being much more song-orientated and characterised by the heavy use of electronic beats (no doubt inspired by the title of the album). Sarah J. Stanley's Bpm up2 134 sets the tone with an infectious vocal hook and a pounding synth groove, followed by Matricarians' chiptune-inspired Synchro-swimming in the Genepool, with its simple yet effective 8-bit counter-melodies. It Is A New Day marries pulsing bass to delicate guitar lines, programmed drums and haunting vocals to great effect on Evensong, and Tim Courtney makes tasteful use of pitch-shifted singing to complement the sequenced electro rhythms of Lose Your Shit. The final track of the album is Kitchen Cynics' Dancefloor Filler, which threatens repeatedly to segue into full-on drum and bass before unleashing a couple of serpentine guitar solos, bringing the record to a rocking climax.
Taken together, these two mini-albums showcase the sheer diversity of the Not A Teepee project, and the creative merits of refusing to be bound by any notion of genre. The benefit of having a whole collective of musicians composing and recording music based around a single theme is in hearing the myriad different approaches that they will adopt to tackle that theme, and always makes for fascinating listening. This is why the collective's work is worthy indeed of your attention.
All of Not A Teepee's releases can be streamed and downloaded for free from here.
