Basic Editions

There’s quite a lot of synthesizer in No Age, so it should, perhaps, come as no surprise that Dean Spunt’s solo project would explore synthetic sounds. Basic Editions comes out of a period he spent exploring vintage1990s EM-U synth Romplers from No Age. The Romplers (“ROM” for computer memory, “plers” for samplers) are filled with pre-set sampled sounds, which can be played through buttons and manipulated in various ways. You can go down any number of rabbit holes and still not understand exactly how the apparatus works. So let’s stipulate the shorthand: Spunt bought a new set of toys and spent a certain amount of time bending them to his will.

We can, at least, gather that the EMU-Romplers came in a variety of editions, each with distinct palettes of sampled sound. The “Mo Phatt” version featured blasts and blats of hip hop textures; you can hear it at work here in the robot funky “Boom Times at the Phatt Farm.”  Other versions delivered more ethereal, ambient friendly tones. Opener “Gonzo Bop” is really neither very gonzo or much of a bop; it floats and hovers over a twitching synthetic bass groove. The amusingly named “Confusion Is SysEx” drops watery bloops into fizzing electric-shocked noise blasts. It’s austere, cerebral, and maybe having a laugh at us.

The tracks, then, are very different from each other, so much so that you wonder how much is Spunt and how much is the instrument he’s playing. “Highlighter Bombast” rolls out a glassy beat, all transparent tones and shushing, syncopating glitch percussion; it would be right at home on a Kompakt comp.  “Fructose,” though is lush and tropical, all sinuous curves and hand-drum patter, though with the sound of a wire sculpture exploding laid over it. And what to make of “The Eternal Present”’s multicolored 1970s optimism? You expect Karen Carpenter to come in singing at any moment.

None of this matters if the music isn’t good — not the unusual instruments, not the variety of sonic textures, not the technical challenges turning pre-set tones into tunes. But in fact, it is quite good, full of airy atmospherics and shifting moods and intricate layers of percussion and tone. It’s quite different from No Age, not to mention from the post-punk rough-housers Spunt highlights on his PPM label, but enjoyable on its own terms. If these are the basic editions, we can only anticipate the deluxe ones.

Jennifer Kelly