(2020) subtractiveLAD - Skin and Bones


Review:
…Stephen Hummel‘s artistic sensibility has remained in place even as the sound of his music’s been affected by changes in gear and technology. These days the Vancouver, B.C. native self-releases, which obviously affords him the freedom to issue what he wants when he wants. In its present iteration, the music Hummel’s issuing under the name is perhaps a tad simpler than before, with only essential elements included. While that makes for a slicker presentation, don’t interpret that to mean minimal: there are grand gestures aplenty, and the music is as robust as ever. Aggressive drumming provides solid springboards for synthesizer melodies, and occasional traces of IDM and acid worm their way into the productions. Acoustic sounds also surface here and there, such as the kalimba that subtly enhances the late-night driving tune “Austral Summer.” One of the release’s major selling-points is Hummel’s beatsmithing, with the intricate groove in “Fragmented Landscapes” one of the album’s most dazzling. He repeatedly animates the tunes with a punchy bottom end influenced by funk, rock, and African music, and certainly no one will mistake the material for ambient. Particularly ear-catching is “Lacuna” for the contrast between its warbling synthesizer treatments and the earthy drumming that gives the material drive; the closing “The Happiest Man Alive,” on the other hand, stands out for the flute-like mellotron melody that sweetly sings above the driving beat. While many tracks stretch out to seven and eight minutes at a time, the longest is “Biota” at eleven. Such length affords Hummel the opportunity to advance through a number of different episodes, from ambient and Tangerine Dream-styled sequences to trippy IDM and effervescent post-rock surfacing at various junctures. Other tracks touch multiple bases, too. The first three minutes of “Future Projection” suggest it’ll be a synthesizer exercise in astral traveling, but the addition of African tribal-styled drumming (in multiple layers, no less) tethers it firmly to earth. The digital-only Skin and Bones shouldn’t perhaps be regarded as Hummel’s definitive subtractiveLAD statement but instead as a ten-track set that adds to a summative portrait still underway. A satisfying sampling of subtractiveLAD as it currently stands, the release also evidences no dearth of ideas or energy, despite the fact that it’s his twenty-eighth release (a small number issued under his birth name, the majority subtractiveLAD releases) since his debut Giving Up the Ghost appeared on n5MD fifteen years ago.


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, electronic
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits