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Pan American - The River Made No Sound
By Bill Lambertson
Release Date: April 16, 2002
This ambient/electronica release is being hailed in some quarters as 'genius' and in others, 'banal'--well it is neither to these ears, and to simply conclude that it is ordinary would be to do it an injustice. Mark Nelson (guitarist for Virginia's Labradford) has crafted a bleak and oddly uninvolving landscape of sounds and textures, where one element may work very well, but is often done in by overdubs that sound as though they were added in complete isolation from one another. I'm guessing that, in part, this may have been the aim of Mr. Nelson--to disorient, to create a state of feeling devoid of familiar landmarks and rote expectations. And yet--it just doesn't truly work.
The cd opens with 'Plains', a drowsy, evocative piece quite reminiscent of Brian Eno's 'Neroli'; here the bell-like piano sounds single notes that float in a sea of
whispery breaths, metallic scrapings and static. Altogether an auspicious beginning, and I settled comfortably into my chair, adjusting my headphones with eyes closed. This is where things began to lose focus. 'For a Running Dog' adds a click-track bass, pounding out a dreary techno heartbeat that is a
distraction from the atmosphere being created by the rising synth fills slowly blooming in the backround.
And so it goes throughout the album: the ghostly, metallic train station voices are nullified by the low, ping ponging drum sound--well, you get the idea. This is a soundtrack to a film that was never made--and, if you are in the right mood, it has the power to awaken something indefinable--like a shard of a memory just beyond your conscious reach. But no matter. It sounds like a sketchy, aural schematic, a first draft where some parts (most notably, the meandering piano) would be better served up alone, unadorned.
There are a few songs where some coherency is achieved with skeletal dub stylings but where the best dub tells its story through its rhythmic, hypnotic circularity, here the bass notes fly off into space--slippery and dissolving. There is a feeling here that an opportunity was lost. Mr. Nelson has talent, as the carefully constructed, shimmering tone-poems of Labradford will attest. Here each song is disconnected from itself, lying in a sea where no breath of wind is found. The water metaphor leads us under the surface, where all the rules of sound change, and what may succeed above the waves is separated, muted, annilhilated.
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