Nick Butcher - Bee Removal (review)

I wrote this Nick Butcher review a while ago and really liked the record. He even emailed me to say he enjoyed my review, thought I think that was just a pretense to ask if we'd put the correct URL for his website with it. It looks like he does more visual art than music these days: http://nickbutcher.net/

artist: Nick Butcher

album title:  Bee Removal

label: Home Tapes

format: CD

release year: 2008

rating: 8.2

Nick Butcher has no lack of artistic outlets: painting, printmaking, bookmaking, design, and music all emanate from the Chicago studio he shares with girlfriend/collaborator Nadine Nakanishi. His output is tied together by a raw, homemade aesthetic that focuses on raw textures and happy accidents. Its no surprise his music follows the same path, using homemade electronics, field recordings and unorthodox sound sources in long, ambient tracks that are as notable for their aural pleasure as their fine-art qualities.

"Tearing Paper" is 20 seconds of static and what sounds like the remnants of a big-band radio broadcast, opening the album with a brief shot of melody the presage the slow burn compositions to come. "Ryman" uses a soft repeating tone as the base for glitchy noise, sounding not unlike Autechre's recent work.

If it wasn't apparent already, this is pretty much music for headphones-only consumption and nowhere is that more apparent than the first epic of the album, the eight-minute "Geist/Coat", which is nearly inaudible for the first minute before a static drone slowly fades in. A single repeated piano note joins the noise, though its off in the distance as if sampled from an ancient 78. Age and disintegration are common themes here, as the past is manipulated and distorted into new forms. At about the halfway point, what sounds like piano and guitar drop single notes as sampled record skips synchronize to form a syncopated beat. This segues into backwards guitar and the low rumble of feedback before ending with a cluster of melancholy chords. The results, though utilizing avant-garde techniques, create a song with a definite flow between the sections that shows a grasp of composition beyond more primitive noise artists.

"Interior, then a Window" is perhaps the most traditional "song" on the album, owing more than a bit to Eno's work. A droning keyboard lays the foundation for the track, with other tones drifting in and out. There's a gentle melody, played slow enough to render it abstract. Little sparks of notes unfurl and disappear amongst the more chance-generated tones, creating the most aurally colorful track on the album.

The title track is trance music for Luddites; it has soothing tones, a glacial pace and interesting textures, but all of it sounds recorded from scratch and processed though any number of analog filters before painstakingly reassembled. The tones generated sound like they came from barely functioning synthesizers, and the whole song sounds stuck together with twine and glue. There's a dedication to craft here that's missing from most electronic music, which strives to remove the work of human hands.

"Sharp Note Singing" is, like "Interior, then a Window", a droning melodic piece, but at nearly 8 minutes it has much longer to develop its pastoral vibe. Like Boards of Canada it evokes images of nature and childhood, and its spare instrumentation means the listener can be immersed in the pure tones.

Artists like Nick Butcher can’t be stopped; whether it’s on CD, in books or on gallery walls, his style of imbuing his art with all the roughness and imperfections of its human creator means he has nearly infinite possibilities in creativity. Granted instrumental experimental music doesn’t have a very wide audience, but those that discover his little world are in for a treat.