Milieu

Shape Of Impact - John Holowach, 6 months in the making, is a mix of genres and styles, with a beat-driven sample-based core. In this collection, John has included vocals by himself, a rapper and an Ian Brown-esque singer.

Interestingly, John’s using guitars a bit more, with very post-rock style tremolo used on two tracks including The First Step of a Long Journey and Chillbilly. I assume Chillbilly is somewhat satirical, with the contrast between the cascading, delayed electric guitar and what sounds like an out of tune acoustic. Run It, on the other hand, is a bit more like early 90s MoWax releases. And just as you think you’re comfortable with John’s sample-based work, he pulls out a collaboration with Scott Waddell: Clubbed to Life, the dubiously (or satirically) titled dramatic techno track. I don’t really understand why the Driveby Mix of this is the same track slowed down, but perhaps they’re trying to recreate the old vinyl feeling.

Particles, Sand Trap and You’re Next in Line are more like John’s other releases. You’re Next in Line is more adventurous and less tangible than the other tracks.

Another seam of creativity John explores on Shape of Impact is drawn from his darker side, using his own vocals. I suspect these are more personal tracks, including: The Walkin’ Song, I Want Your Body, Inside and It Equals 21. There’s excellent moments in I Want Your Body, where he appears to be re-sequencing the vocals and removing the gaps between the words. Despite the mangling of the sounds, they take on a unique quality and become more expressive, creating a demand on the listener’s brain to try and make sense of them.

In Behind My Eyes, John appears to have taken the role of a producer, working with J.Lang, G’ Wills & Nails. This is one of the best produced and yet simplest tracks on the album, using a simple piano refrain and neatly but varied drum loops to create a solid hip hop track.

Two Sides is where we see John moving from hip hop to something more like Unkle. This track is verging on something clearly marketable. The drums, guitar, samples and vocals all gel naturally. There’s nothing inherently original or new, it just works very well.

I’m always amazed at how little research traditional media outlets seem to perform when writing news articles. In MP3 players to select tunes to your taste, New Scientist seems blissfully unaware of two incredible technologies that have been available for some time: Pandora and Last.fm.

If you haven’t tried them yet, go and play with Pandora right now. Part of the Music Genome Project, Pandora can find music you may like based on a massive database of musical attributes. Here’s an example: a few weeks ago I was feeling in an environmental ambient mood, so I told Pandora to find me things like Biosphere. It pulled out Mathias Grassow, who I hadn’t heard before, and i was astonished because his music was exactly what I was looking for.

So straight away, I ordered a CD of his music, and I love it. It’s everything I enjoy about ambient music and phonography. So now I’m very thankful to Pandora.

So perhaps Xavier Serra is not aware of Pandora and the music genome project. They should get together, they might be able to solve one of the biggest problems known to mankind: shuffle on large MP3 collections always seeming to pull out things you don’t want to hear!