Listening to the album as a whole, as opposed to just "Timeless," the last track, isn't a matter of, "Oh yeah, what about those other pieces;" they can't have been composed to be, but they form a preternaturally good setting for it. All of the pieces stand up, and they are integral, a kind of staking out of territory for the title track to take the center of.
The thing I've "never figured out" about "Timeless" is how they take--or how Abercrombie takes--such a simple piece--drone, synth bass, organ cords, light percussion, and a simple melody on guitar--and make it so large, free and mysterious.
Okay, silly exercise of triangulating between reference points nearly as obscure.
The Books is somewhere between the raw acoustic two-guys strings and percussion of Supergenerous, the eerie two-guys sampled vocals and electronics of Boards of Canada, and, um...
The vocal samples are rarely reduced to repeated snips like so many, including Boards of Canada and say Moby, do. Warmer. Doing very interesting things with recorded vocals is often the basis of a track. And the musical style has a home in a folksey sound, but ranges wider than Supergenerous's does.
Maybe that third point would be the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The sound walks a rope bridge between composition and just stuff… Read more
