Colleen
Everyone Alive Wants Answers
(Leaf)
This is one of those releases that literally sounds timeless. Although it is clearly a product of the digital age of manipulation, it shuffles through a hazy world of plucked strings and soft edges. Most of the tracks feel like they were captured from the edge of something more, yet that subtle space is also what helps make the recording what it is. Imagine someone playing classical records in the apartment below you, or listening across a field to hear a string quartet on the other side and you're somewhat close to the sounds of Everyone Alive Wants Answers.
Mostly, this is loop music, but there's a subtle quality of manipulation at work in these little mini-symphonies. The opening album-titled "Everyone Alive Wants Answers" mixes the sounds of birds with stuttering strings and what may be someone warming up on a harp. It all prickles along through a soft haze of hiss and soon the album has moved on to "Ritournelle," as a loop of a string waltz drifts along slowly before the needle again slides off to the side and the crackle and hiss of age creeps into the track.
"Your Heart On Your Sleeve" is a building, slowly-ascending filtered loop of what may have been a music box at one time, while "Goodbye Sunshine" is all backwards loops of Parisian city life that is the soundtrack of leaves leaping off the ground and re-attaching themselves to tree as seasons retreat backwards. A mixture of William Basinski and Vivaldi, Everyone Alive Wants Answers is for those who enjoy electronic music with a bit of sepia tone. It may remind you of your childhood, it may remind you of sleeping in on the weekend, and it may simply find a place in your collection next to the rest of your warm fuzzies. Nostalgic without being sappy and ambient without being pure wallpaper, this is 13 tracks and just about 40 minutes of beautiful music.
Rating: 7.75
