Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.07.2015, Qupperneq 33

33The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 10 — 2015 MUSIC
The Bandcamp blurb for ‘We
Came As We Left’, the sec-
ond EP by Buspin Jieber (aka
Murya, aka Guðmundur Ingi
Guðmundsson) opens with the state-
ment “Some call it Retro-Wave or even
Retro-Futurism—we call it good music.”
To that I can only say, retro compared
to what? The fact is that the 80s revival
has ended up lasting longer than the
actual 1980s, leaving us with a swath
of recombinated music that you’d sim-
ply call “80s music,” a simulacrum of a
sound and style that bears little real-
ity to the actual 1980s itself. You can
see this with Jieber’s style, from the
punning name (as noted in previous
Grapevine issues by the Staumur boys,
who likened him to fellow “80s music”
pillager Com Truise) to the concept of
the EP being stuffed with all sorts of
references to “1980s” cultural signifi-
ers such as fast cars and orange jump-
suits, Molly Ringwald and the film ‘War
Games’.
Production-wise, I cannot find fault
with this record. Every part of this EP
moves along with shiny positronic
grace and engineered precision. The
synth lines pulse and glide alongside
chrome-coated rhythmic surfaces with
a polished sheen. Listening to “Knob-
lifter,” for example, I can easily envision
a video consisting of found-footage
shots from 1980s corporate information
videos and aspirational TV advertise-
ments. There are even moments, such
as on the tracks “We Came As We Left”
and “The Package,” where the slightly
off-pitch melody lines and abstract vo-
cal samples recall the dreaminess and
drift of Boards of Canada.
But overall I found the experience
of ‘We Came As We Left’ to be one of
flatness, especially when compared to
Jieber’s debut EP, ‘Night Drive’, which
displayed a more visceral portrait of
tech-romanticism and memory fog.
It comes across as just too clean—too
pristine to be an effective recollection
of a bygone age. The glistening melo-
dies and sunny bucolic bliss of endless
highways, fast cars, and bright sun-
shine end up feeling a bit forced. The
result is one of sounds and mental im-
ages lifted and stitched together from
YouTube videos, instead of something
formed from the faded melancholia of
past experience or a thorough re-im-
aging of alternate sonic paths that “the
1980s” could have taken us to.
- BOB CLUNESS
Glitchy synths, ambient in-
terludes, and dreamscape
pop: that’s ‘Apeshedder’ in
a nutshell. What that doesn’t
tell us about, of course, is the shimmer-
ing flourishes with which, for example,
“Harmala” gleefully ends. Or the fun-
time trippiness of the spacey, cushi-
ony “Ootz.” Or the way that track’s beat
crumbles and stumbles toward drum
& bass rhythms. Or its juxtaposition of
flying flute sounds and cymbals so dis-
torted they sound like a robot sighing.
It sounds like a great place to visit, the
world of Apeshedder: a psychedelic,
sometimes dance-y, sometimes reflec-
tive world where bleeps and blobs are
made of wandering colours and won-
derful collisions. There’s a hint of mad-
ness there, too, as the manic laughter
and wobbly guitar interjections of
“Transikh” illustrate. The blend of laid-
back soft marimba-ish melodicism and
frenetic beats ought not to work, but
they do. “Memento Mori” is a sort of
oddball elegy for a deceased electric
woodpecker, which is quite the trick
when you think about it. The album's
happier and hipper than the likes of
Squarepusher, but too demented to sit
quietly at the table of ambient without
pushing everyone else’s faces into their
mashed potato.
- JOE SHOOMAN
Album
Reviews
Buspin Jieber
We Came As We Left (2015)
www.facebook.com/Buspin-Jieber
Dayglo memories,
remembered for you
wholesale
Gunnar Jónsson Collider
Apeshedder
Moller Records Helga032
Leftfield explorations in
electronics