Thursday, April 21, 2011

"Unrequited"

Song: "And Unrequited as Well"
Artist: Kettel
Search Term: "Unrequited"

If this song is at all indicative of the level of creativity that Dutch electronic guy Kettel generally offers, I really hope he starts getting the attention he deserves. (Maybe he does in the Netherlands, but I'm talking about the USA, "The Country That Matters®.") Superficially, "And Unrequited as Well" draws comparisons to Brad Mehldau's freewheeling jazz covers of Radiohead songs and particularly the frictionless electro-bloops of Royksopp's "Eple," but the skillfully-engineered arrangement is closer to the deep-focus tableaux of Four Tet. It's a difficult song to pin down: On top of the fact that a couple different time signatures have been let loose simultaneously, there are a few odd, stumbly breaks that don't dislocate things but do ensure you're paying attention, and it's not always easy to tell where the organic musicianship ends and the programming and sampling begins. There's no way you'd be able to hum any of the instruments' parts because they seem to be jumping semi-randomly around a prescribed scale, as they do in IDM tracks. However, for all the academic showiness, it's an accessibly musical composition whose slippery nature is invigorating rather than maddening. I really love this.

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