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Font Translation Errors is the first full length by Nicole Elmer's Neutral project which mixes melody and rhythm in a catchy amalgam of modern electronic styles. With the first two tracks I Love You A Lot and Blue Paper (Neutral Mix) being the most engaging moments - even tending to find myself singing Blue paper for some time after each listen,

With a delicate and precise piano we start Font Translation Errors in top form with I Love You A Lot. Towards the first minute this shifts, diving into a dense beat territory. Lashing rapid structures over casual melodies and piano reprised, missing with swollen bass sounds. Distorted vocals are present, which put me off at first, but quickly become just a part of the texture. Equal parts melodic and manic, in an upbeat, warm sounding fashion. This is followed by the Neutral mix of Blue Paper - a slowly evolution of sound. Vocals are present again, but here are more integral and more to my taste. The meandering focuses into a tune - a lush swirl and regular beat, with warm bass strumming sounds. The vocals loop emerging with time as "maybe if I slashed your tyres, things would be alright". Another extremely dynamic track, though less frenetic than the preceding I Love You A Lot. As it goes on Blue Paper is heavily layered, creating a wonderfully complex sound. Returning to a pulse conclusion Blue Paper is followed by the slight string intro of Five. Present, this becomes a click heavy construct, upbeat with the steady click flow. Bass is small bursts contrasting the mounting melody, light and growing well. The click layering becoming percussive to the lush arrangements, another enjoyable piece.

There are a couple of tracks on Font Translation Errors which appear more than once and one of those is Sinew, which appears as Sinew and Lig (A Sinew Translation) - both versions being up there. Sinew grows slowly a soundscape, bassy with a certain clicking rumbling. Maintaining a subtlety in its flow and buried muttered vocals till the beat layer takes it up a step. The tone of the beats matches I Love You A Lot, but the pacing remains consistent with the flow of Sinew. A moodier piece, but retaining the same attention to detail demonstrated on the other material. Though pacing does increase slightly with progress through this 8 minute track. The translation Lig starts in a similar form, but steps up in a melodic pulse fashion straight away. This is the first clear indicator that Lig is suitably different from Sinew - stepped up plinking beat structures at times approaching noise, while mixing with the layering melody. Beats focus in a plink and click form along with the strings and hard glitch formations, while sinew remains at Lig's core.

Hey Ash, Where Are We? also appears as two versions, the original and the Solenoid remix. The original starts with mid paced string melody and an easy beat, slipping gently into an extra level of piano melody and clicking, more rapid beats. The pacing and quality of Hey Ash remain fairly consistent and it's a piece which is easy to like - the mixed vocal sample repeating the word "hey" only adds to that in an amusing fashion (more so than the classic Butthole Surfers Hey which uses a similar idea - but hey, that's a tangent). The Solenoid remix follows the same structure as the original but in some ways has a cleaner, more drawn out sound.

Which leaves the Burning Rome remix of Blue Paper, which is more chaotic, and while enjoyable is not as impressive as the original. Along with that we have the okay tracks Bil Keane, Huckleberry Oxymoron and Unusable Bolt. Bil Keane with its chaotic and diverse structure emphasizes the element of humour in Neutral with the repeating sample.

To conclude I'd like to make a convenient comparison to the work of others so that everyone reading this would go -"oh right, sounds cool" - but I find myself stumped. Comparisons provided are to Autechre and Jega - I don't really see the Autechre, though might make a comparison to Mira Calix which I have also just reviewed; though I don't know Jega well enough to comment, however what I've read of Jega sounds about right. Anyway comparisons tend to be misleading so don't bother with those - just acknowledge them well enough to put Neutral into a referential ballpark that suits you and accept my recommendation that this is a rather enjoyable album!

RVWR: PTR
March 2000

More Information

Neutral

Part of a site which seems to cover related projects - the Neutral material is currently minimal but does have some sound samples.

Mad Monkey Records

Label site containing more info on this and other MMR releases.