Since its launch two years ago, Crouton Music has continually impressed us. Operated by (former?) members of Pele, the label produces limited runs of interesting, intelligent, challenging music, artfully packaged and presented. Their efforts are a triumph of internet-era indie micromarketing -- artists creating the music they want to make and providing it to a small but devoted group of friends and fans.
Intended, according to the press materials, to "develop the idea that communication through sound can tell individual stories and reveal insights into people's lives that are otherwise unspoken", Folktales (No. 1) consists of three discrete pieces designed to complement a short text written by the composers. The pieces are all around twenty minutes long, with each composer's work on a separate 3" CD, to the undoubted delight of the packaging and format fetishists on Crouton's mailing list.
Make no mistake -- this is challenging stuff. While previous Crouton releases have at least paid lip service to conventional pop song structure, Folktales sits firmly in the experimental/electroacoustic camp. Assembled from found sounds, field recordings, analog textures and other audio ephemera, these compositions demand the listener's willing immersion.
First up is "Two Ice Fields of the Exact Same Size", by Crouton's own C. Rosenau. An extremely abstract piece, it consists of the percussive interactions of various objects -- a heating vent, a metal lid, salt, a wine glass and others. Actually, more than anything else, "Two Ice Fields" sounds as if Rosenau set up a microphone in the corner of a concrete-walled basement and proceeded to throw bits of wood, metal and plastic against the wall, happily recording the scraping, bouncing and clattering noises that ensued, then layered the recording over a faint, reverse-gated keyboard tone. With six minutes remaining, the piece shifts to a more aggressively percussive mode, with a crash cymbal and various other clanging objects adding sharp bursts of metallic sound. Behind them, a halting melody is plucked on an acoustic guitar, its lower strings abruptly muffled by metallic objects, creating a vibrant, textured hum. Headphones are recommended if you want to get the most from this piece.
"Three Days from Anywhere", by prolific electronic/improvisational composer Hal Rammel, initially sounds like a partially-erased recording of someone being harassed by a swarm of bees. It's no coincidence; Rammel used recordings of bees to create the piece, using home-made instruments to broaden the sonic palette. "Three Days from Anywhere" is easily Folktales' most oblique piece; most of the action -- what there is of it -- occurs at an almost subaural level. You're left feeling as if something interesting is going on in another room of your home, but you can't quite muster the resolve to get up and investigate. The subtle thrumming, twanging and rhythmic pitter-pattering of Rammel's instruments sounds like an upstairs neighbor attempting to quietly rearrange his cast-iron living room furniture.
The final piece is sound artist John Kannenberg's "Lave". Best known for his work as Whistling Pariah, Kannenberg has created the album's most engrossing work -- a mixture of short-wave white noise and outdoor ambience, shot through with throbbing bass and keyboard fills. Like an uneasy nap on a summer afternoon, "Lave" is a blur of half-recognized sounds and soothing textures. "Is that percussion or a lawn sprinkler?" you'll wonder. "Pink noise or rain?" The latter third of the piece comes as close as Folktales gets to pop music, charging a skeletal, drawn-out bass guitar melody with skittering sprinkler/percussion and the insistent drone of a keyboard/air conditioner. The track ends with a series of electronic pings, blips and burbles, heavily echoed, their niggling blither occasionally jolted by further low-end humming. For sheer aural variety, "Lave" is probably the strongest of Folktales' three pieces.
If you're wondering what kind of text could tie these works together, here's a sample from "The Tale":
"A fresh lemon dripped juice. Dripped juice on the top of a howling wind wrapped all over my face like a bald man. The surroundings powdered genetics in their spaciousness. Sliced in half, like guitar strings, it dripped juice from itself slowly over my mother, creating an abstract pulsing, and the broadcasts of an entire ecosystem."
Are you beginning to see how this all fits together? I'll hand it to Rosenau, Rammel and Kannenberg -- I can see the tie-in between ideas and text. There is a story in their music. It may not be long, or heavily detailed, or even particularly coherent, but it's there.
Folktales No. 1 was pressed in a limited edition of three hundred, and I think that was a wise move. Mueller and Rosenau don't expect this sort of thing to be everyone's cup of tea. Rather than attempting to push such an abstract work onto willing -- but not necessarily appreciative -- fans, they've issued a modest quantity, virtually assuring that demand will outstrip supply. While it doesn't provide much bang for your music-buying buck in terms of pure volume of noise per minute, Folktales is a comparatively accessible exploration of an interesting concept. If you like the sound of that, you'd better act quickly -- Crouton can't have more than 299 copies left!
