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Vladislav Delay's ANIMA



I'll keep this short, too short.  On first listen, but
a careful first listen, I really can't concur with
some tepid-to-disparaging reviews I've heard/read of
Vladislav Delay's recent ANIMA (Mille Plateaux).  I
think it's a teeming unkempt garden of contradictions,
clearly working the ground broken on ELE/ENTAIN, but
getting way past the diffused dub and minimal,
scattered beats of those recordings.  It's admirably
full of choices that trip over one another to get to
finish line that might be there after all, even though
the music's most obvious overall feature is it
staticity.  I think it's a dream narrative, or
structures itself like a dream---well, like
_someone's_ dream; I don't say that because I'm
clever, but because in the samples at the beginning
and end of this hour-long piece---without index
divisions (very annoying, but also very suggestive: my
recording of Morton Feldman's PIANO AND STRING QUARTET
doesn't have divisions, either)---we hear someone
asking someone else about a dream; we are awoken at
the 60min mark with a tremendous splash of water (?),
then reminded by the sample about the dream content.
(I'm sorry, this is by memory; I haven't the disc with
me, and if I did, it would be too much trouble to
fast-forward it 60+ minutes to the "punchline"----aha!
the strategy unfolds itself).

A friend on another list, or maybe on this list, once
saved ENTAIN for me by comparing it to AUTOMATIC
WRITING.  It was a glib comparison, but it's
fascinating, and it made me listen deeper, and louder,
and more insistently.  Maybe I'm missing the point of
ANIMA, maybe I'm too easily persuaded on first listen.
Nonetheless: I think it's a real advancement from
ENTAIN, and I think it's a shimmering, breathing,
paroxysmal piece of dream music, unfolding according
to its own peculiar logic.

Damn, that was long, too long.

----s, unsolicited sophist, will expound for food

P.S. Does anyone know the source of the samples at the
beginning and end of ANIMA?

NP: Matmos - THE WEST


(sorry if this was sent to list twice)

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