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Bluefat
Archive November
2009
You Are
the
Electronic
Village
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Teleseen
is a.k.a. Gabriel Cyr, a Brooklyn-based DJ-multi-instrumentalist who
specializes in what one might call a field of sound remotely identifiable
as, say, abstract dub, working an area of electronic-aligned music whose
sheer "what do you call it" within the contemporary music dialogue is in
fact one of its more thrilling facets. And if I say that his "soundscapes"
bear a distinctly rigid formality in their investigations of strictly
musical concerns (time, space, dynamics, rhythms poly- and counter-),
in this rare instance it's to be understood as a compliment. These
profusely layered and intensely labored-over works reveal as much about the
admirable focus and seriousness of purpose driving the artist as they do
about their varied and plainly ambiguous subject matters.
While
there's a pervasive cold sensuality to the pieces on Cyr's new Fear of
the Forest (Percepts), that is somewhat paradoxically one of its strengths; you
sense a yearning for human connection perhaps left unfulfilled by Teleseen's
previous full-length, the critically acclaimed, industrial-strength dour War (2007). Fear of the Forest makes embracing moves in the
direction of a kind of warmth, the success of which owes largely to a few very
fine raps courtesy collaborators Jah Sight, Abena Koomson and Billy Woods,
as well as Cyr's recent dives into the literature and music of Morocco,
sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.
BLUEFAT:
Well, Fear
of the Forest is, among a lot of other things, very, very beautiful.
Just washing one's self in this crystal-clear sound is oddly moving.
TELESEEN:
I wanted to make it kind of emotional too, in an abstract way.
Fear
of the Forest ÐÐ What's the title about?
(continued)
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