Change!
Circle Of Ambient Friends

THE REVIEW

Nowadays you have the possibility to discover new music without even leaving home. All you need is a computer and a telephone line and you’re ready to go. Fast internet offers a thousand ways to discover new, possibly thrilling, proposals. And I'm not referring to sharing software, nor to record companies that sell songs for "a few" pennies (thus fueling an increasingly bulimic, frantic, superficial, and never critical or lucid musical culture), but to small independent and very willing labels. Like Comfort Stand which puts its entire catalog online, available for free download, among which you might uncover a raw precious gem: the Change!
Their album Circle Of Ambient Friends is truly a magnificent surprise: something sublime, suspended between Anticon influences and Icelandic cosmic sounds, glitch, and post-punk evocations.
But the result is completely original: distortion, bleeps, arpeggios, drum-machine sounds, real percussion, and insistent drones blend together and create an evocative backdrop for the reciting voice (between the more intoxicated Doseone and the more relaxed John Lydon). An ensemble that might remind you of names further removed from the basics: certain dark mantras by This Heat shifted to an almost naive, certainly childish key. Or the more theatrical Tom Waits covered by a thick ambient and noise magma that immobilizes him in a static childish restlessness. At times the work becomes more challenging, getting just a bit lost in experimentation for its own sake. But this is a venial sin, easily forgivable for these three guys, especially after they've crafted fascinating pieces that are enjoyable, dark, or tender like few others in these times. In Skeletal Forms there’s very little to envy from Charles Hayward's experiment group; The Sun Has Wing is a pop song passed through Subtle’s deconstructive rays; This Year I Will Disappear is moving for how playful and amused/fun it is, while Died At The Disco is metropolitan abstract poetry.

I have been greatly struck by the work of this trio from Auckland: maybe not easy listening and sometimes a bit monotonous, but COAF for me is a small masterpiece, a hidden treasure that I'm happy to have discovered (after all, it’s also free)...