New Music: Valet, Alias

Valet - Mystic Flood (Kranky 2007)

Valet - Blood is Clean / Kranky

If you read this at any point on Friday the 11th, I wasn't actually here. I was out graduating from college. Save the congratulations; I'm sure at some point I'll be told that I was "missing a few credits" and the whole thing was a sham. On that day, I will probably drop out, get disowned by my parents, and move to a foreign nation (North Africa always appealed to me) to live as a recluse. Alone, despotic, utterly shambolic.

Sounds pretty extreme, right? I guess that'd be the kneejerk response to hearing that you're a little further behind than you thought (...again). The logical thing to do would be to sit back, collect your thoughts, take a breath, rub your forehead like Adam Schiff on "Law & Order" and keep on keepin' on. What one needs as a background in those moments of extreme stress and frustration is not music that will tip you over the breaking point, music that will not aggravate and instigate and incite and inflame. What you need in those times of small crisis are the soundtracks that stay out of the way: Music that will set a mood and a tone but won't overtake the moment. Valet's Honey Owens knows what I'm talking about: With a list of instruments culled from Salvation Army bin-hunting, Owens takes the ambient root to produce a brooding set of songs for her solo debut, Blood is Clean.

Forget about accessibility: Straight away Owens sets the tone of the album with "April 6," an eight-minute epic that wavers with sparse acoustic guitar plucking an uncomfortable chord repeatedly in the final couple of minutes before heading into the hazy "Burmajuana" and then the, erm, "single" and title-track. Though it sounds like the album is a masterpiece of studio engineering and countless hours devoted to isolating and recording just that perfect pitch for each instrument, the truth comes out on "Blood is Clean" the song when the sounds of a train can be heard charging forth in the background. It's a unique moment in that suddenly the album shifts from being this sealed, distant thing into a murky bedroom folk record turned well inward, deep into the depths of the head. It's almost like a folk Kid A or something. There's your big statement for this particular review, anyway.

A few listens through, I think the songs with Owens' vocals stand out immediately. "Tame All the Lions" and "My Volcano" both showcase this, but her voice is so wonderfully low and almost twistedly seductive that it sometimes feels like another layer in among the swooning guitars and drones that dominate the album. "North" is the concluding track and possibly the finest example of this; at 13 minutes, it whooshes like a far-off UFO for half the track before evolving into a celestial ambiance that concludes the album. I picked "Mystic Flood" because it's one of the more manageable tracks but also because it shows off this post-folk kind of vibe that Grizzly Bear really excelled with last year on Yellow House and which has occasionally been successful in the past three or four years. Instead of feeling less homey, Blood is Clean feels discomfiting. Or if you're three credits behind, appropriate. It's all relative.













Alias - "'Sixtoo - Remix for 'Karmic Retribution / Funny Sticks'" (Anticon 2007)

Alias - Collected Remixes / Anticon

And relatively speaking, Brendon Whitney can't be faulted for inconsistency: As the master beatsmith behind last year's collaboration with Tarsier, Brookland / Oaklyn, Alias threw in his trademark sounds as Tarsier dominated the mic. So that begs the question of what exactly the trademark sounds of Alias are. By the time you're finished with these eleven songs, you think you have a good idea: ...Endtroducing found-sounds and basic hip-hop beats pegged with the odd IDM touch. So yeah, technically none of these songs are new.

The One AM Radio remix of "What You Gave Away" is the first to demonstrate this sound, nursing Hrishikesh Hirway's dreamy vocal delivery along on the opener from 2004's A Name Writ in Water. It maintains the aura of the original, so this is somewhat of a red herring: As Brian Howe accurately mentioned, Whitney sees remixing more as a song coming to him and the construction of "his" sound or vision rather than the other way around. It just so happens that the sounds of Hirway's folktronica happen to coincide nicely.

The John Vanderslice remix of "Exodus Damage" is more where the visions diverge; granted, Vanderslice is a smart enough guy not to know about electronics, but the fact that he returns for a remix of his own song makes you stop and wonder. And then there is the other main offense: That the gunshot drum marches of the Boy in Static remix for "Stay Awake" and inserted vinyl hissing in the Lucky Pierre remix for "Crush" are both utterly, utterly uniform. Further evidence: Fully seven of the eleven songs on Collected Remixes all hover in the four-minute bracket.

But here's the thing: While his beats may not be definitive and recognizing an Alias remix is like recognizing a remix, this is still an Alias release. Interestingly, his lack of constant reimagination is an asset in the sense that you feel that this is really an Alias album rather than a remix album. Maybe the typical hi-hat lines of a generic top 40 radio hit inhabit Giardini di Miro's "Given Ground," but if you don't like his crashing drums then you probably don't like Alias period. It's who he is and his remixes, though limited in scope, are an extension of that. Nobody's perfect, but this Sixtoo remix is pretty close: More than any other track here, Alias uses a looped sitar line and overmodulated everythings to make an imposing track at the tail-end of the collection. It's an aggressive and unique take on Sixtoo, satisfying and enveloping all at once.

If you think you're too far beyond Alias remixes at this point, maybe you're simply beyond beats. That's where Valet comes in; likewise, if you feel like you've graduated from epic drones to something with a little more form, Brendon Whitney is the man to guide you. Starting points on opposite ends of the stage. All you gotta do now kid is walk it. Don't forget to turn the tassle when you get to the other side.