seven

Couchblip is a new label hailing from Australia, specializing in esoteric electronic tunes. I must admit I was initially deceived by this release. The first five tracks have a very "demo"-type feel to them, and show their influences very prominently; a little mouse on mars here, a little plaid there, a dash of suction records material, etc. and for one reason or another, my listening of the disc was constantly interrupted before I could really get any further. Well, recently I have had several opportunities to delve into the latter half of the disc, and well, I was most pleasantly surprised.

Couchblip consists of three artists: bloq, robokoneko, and disjunction reunion, all featured here with five tracks each. As I said, the first five are kinda standard fare, definitely good, but not going anywhere that labels such as dot, suction, worm interface and toytronic have not gone before, mellow laid back melodies with sometimes skittery, and sometimes hip hop beats.

Further in however, we start to see that each artist featured here does have something unique and original to offer, sounding distinct from each other, as well as from other artists in the scene. There is something distinctly, well, Australian in the music. Not necessarily from a cultural perspective, but the music's "attitude" if you will, has a very distinct air about it, differentiating it from other artists in this demographic of tunes, which usually almost exclusively hail from England, Germany or the US.

Tiny arpeggios and sequences dance around melancholy pads backed by effective and non-obtrusive percussion. Further into the disc it becomes apparent that perhaps the first few tracks by each artist are maybe older tracks, as more into the disc, it becomes harder to compare any of the three artists to others operating today. And maybe that's why I like it so much. Rather than doing the popular and hideously overkilled autechre sound, they seem to borrow more from the early to mid nineties sound, adding modern elements and their own touch. I also hear a bit of Detroit innovation here as well, weather intentional or not, and that is certainly welcome. It shows a clear sense of history and knowing ones roots rather than saying, "gee I like aphex twin, I'll make some songs on my computer, put em on mp3.com, act enigmatic and weird, claim I was influenced by nobody, and then people will like me."

But the couchblip collective avoids that, perhaps from their isolation from the so called "scene," where every 19 year old with a computer dreams of owning a tank like Richard James, and coming up with even weirder beats than autechre.

Nope, what you get here is pure passion for music, wonderfully arranged emotions in audio format, and no pretension. These seem like the best reasons for wanting to write music and for wanting to set up a label. Couchblip deserves your attention.