Bob Stewart from Lawrence, Kansas has put these nine tracks out into space and we're pleased to hear them.
They have that increasingly familiar base of laid back jazz tempos with a bit of guitar, a touch of bass and a scattering of drums. That mix is then infiltrated with electronic additions and shifts that emulate some kind of sonic refraction machine, disturbing our complacent ears into closer attention and our souls into more appreciative effort.
Where Tortoise, Don Caballero or Battles achieve full satisfaction from this kind of approach, with plenty in reserve, BoxKite seems to be on full stretch for most of the time, with a less fulfilling end product. The effect on me is to provoke a little anxiety that things are a bit harsh or just a little out of control. Some of the natural instruments sound more conventional rock than jazz, like rehearsal room outtakes, picked up without too much care and pasted in wherever they will fit. The result is less articulation and more fracture than might have been intended. I'm not sure. But at the very least there is something going on here that sits uneasily in the space between chopped up collage and subtly mixed sound washes.
Trying to stick to what the CD is, rather than what it isn’t I would point to the restless energy. Pulses are busy from the start. Within eight bars of the start of "Accept Advice" we get half a dozen themes starting up, and a strong tune appears well before the end to draw the short dense track together. "Things We are" has a TARWATER feel to it – an outdoors sonority. But maybe the bass line is a bit stiff. Voices work pretty well. "Tones Eyes" is back with clicks and scrapes and some furious cymbal and drum action against a wind machine and some rather conventional guitar arpeggios. Finding and holding onto a level isn't an option though and the sudden changes confuse rather than delight or startle.
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"Every Other Word" uses that helicopterish shudder that anyone with a midi patch is familiar with. But the tune sounds good when it starts. "January Nights" could be a folk rock tune warming up – but the potential is chucked out for a dive into bloody Erik Satie's Gymnopédie (the one that even I know backwards). It's a very lame move. And each time the country tune tries to force its way back in I get a grating feeling that someone is messing me about for no good purpose. Its close to unforgivable.
But then "Not Only Everything" restores the balance, even while the temperature of the drum kit percussion is hotting up in a fidgety way. The three remaining tracks "Moon Observers Handbook", "All The In Betweens" and "1000 Chairs" continue with similar brave experiments, some working better than others and one or two just spluttering.
It is a brave shot, but I've been listening to a lot of electronica lately and this doesn't have the natural feel and expressive power that we can now take for granted in the field. BoxKite still sounds like work in progress – with distinct prospects and possibilities, but not right up there with your Warp or your Leaf Records.
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