7

Album review

7, Philip Jeck's seventh solo album, portrays him in his comfort zone -- too comfortable, actually. Some will see it as the final distillation of his art, others (like this reviewer) will find it redundant and a watered-down version of what his music can be. Of course, it would be ludicrous to talk of a "commercial" attempt in such a tiny niche, but the fact remains that 7, with its shorter pieces and cloudy moods, does sound like a move to please a wider crowd (maybe the same crowd that made Fennesz's much-deserving album Endless Summer an underground hit). Compared to the forward-looking, elementally harsh CD Host released on Sub Rosa only a few weeks earlier, 7 sounds downright complacent. That said, it remains Jeck and it shares at least some of the qualities of his previous albums, especially in terms of starkness and how he can conjure up an alien world from terrestrial elements. "Some Pennies" and the opening "Wholesome" are very good pieces, but the other five tracks have a "cute" feeling about them -- maybe in the lush strings and synths Jeck used, maybe simply in the fact that no sound breaks free from the soup to startle or shock the listener. But this album's lack of strength is mostly due to the absence of the profoundly odd (as in: surreal) accretions of vinyl sound sources that empowered Jeck's early releases with a unique mystique. In short, 7 is the man's most accessible record, but accessibility comes at a cost and this time it is the troubling essence of his music that pays the price. And without that essence, Jeck's music is nothing but another drone.

© François Couture /TiVo