SubtractiveLAD

igloomag

There's a bevy of virtual machines working at Stephen Hummel's behest on his second release as subtractiveLAD for n5md. A host of machines are capering and cavorting in concert with Hummel's direction, chasing after his mouse pointer like eager puppies or fervent sycophants. Billed as a darker vision than his 2005 release (Giving Up The Ghost), Suture boils with more caustic energies. There are jagged peaks on his modular melodies, sheared edges on his beats that leave them unstable and a hint of dirty static gumming up the tender works of his percussion.

"Petals" builds from ambient tones and echoes of voices lost in a cavernous train station to an apoplectic hurricane of sound, a wash of white noise that collapses into the first of many melodic passages which are born from the electrified grid of Hummel's imagination. "Brokadocious" captures the textured interplay of Hummel's virtual machinery as distinct voices dart around each other with synthetic passion, a fusion of strings and voices that capers like children on May Day. The round synths of "Twinge" are full-bellied beasts that squelch with summer ripeness as they are massaged by shuffling drum pads and watery breezes; it's a panoply of rhythms that flit about one another with luxurious voluptuousness. "Lepidoptera," on the other hand, while maintaining this same level of carefree complexity, is butterfly music made for a later season -- early fall when there is a crispness to the air and the melodies are a bit more lean and poignant.

Hummel drifts from torpid summer indolence to autumnal chill music as the album progresses. "Rerum Natura" is a diaphanous fabrication of ghostly notes and programming that patters like an early evening rain storm. "Soft Inside" pops and crackles with a bit more foreground noises while the melodies chime and ring like an amplified piano left out in the rain too long. This is like the warm underbelly of a winter animal: soft, warm and enveloping. "Your Tattoo" is nearly invisible in its entrance -- just a whisper of static and a vague echo of a drone -- that starts as an itch (the persistent sound of skin being scoured by fingernails) before the dry epidermal scratch blossoms into a programmed drum kit and the rising thermal of an evolving tone poem.

While he creates gorgeous melodies and rhythms that are like Boards of Canada ambience as re-imagined by Peter Namlook for a FAX record (the sweeping organic flow of "Embryonic Again," for example), Hummel also experiments with virtual machines that pop and crunch with generative chaos -- Autechre style gurgles that grind against VR orchestras in programmed mash-ups that blend the cardiotonic exercise of machine-generated beats with rarified exhortations of stringed instruments (ala "Sleepwalker"). Maybe "Between the Mind and Body" encapsulates the musical creation he is trying to accomplish with Suture: the delicate vibe of ambient expressionism bound to the crackling chaos of digital impressionism in an effort to make music which rises like a vapor in the mind while sustaining the body's need for movement music.

textura

Vancouverite Stephen Hummel considerably toughens up his subtractiveLAD sound on Suture, the follow-up to 2005's Giving Up the Ghost. While the earlier album suggested kinship with City Centre Office's Arovane, the new one's heavier ambiance aligns him closely to Spezial Material's Solarium, HP Stonji, and Traject—not a bad thing, by any stretch. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is Hummel's attention to pacing as the new album, like the first, offers a travelogue in lieu of haphazard sequence, with the disc establishing a methodically delineated narrative arc over its seventy minute duration. The encapsulating opener “Petals” pairs grandiose strings with writhing machine noise before menacing cuts like “Brokadocious” and “Twinge” deepen the intensity with colossal beats and blazing synth motifs. Initially alternating between gentler settings and throbbing epics, the disc eventually enters an introspective zone of supple orchestral ambiance (“Soft Inside,” “Rerum Natura”) until the blistering meltdown “Sleepwalker” arrives like your worst nightmare. Don't be alarmed, however, as the album subsequently ends with the peaceful outro “Embryonic Again.” Though it closes on a note of placidity, it's Suture's epic dimension that signifies the most dramatic development in Hummel's subtractiveLAD style.

gridface

SubtractiveLAD (née Stephen Hummel) is a Vancouver-based musician with a background in jazz. He now creates his own computer instruments. Suture, his second album (to be released on Valentine’s Day), begins with a wash of palette-cleansing noise on “Petals.” But “Brokadocious” is where it starts to get funky. Intricately programmed drums and synths stutter their way through a frenzied jam session.

“Safety in Numbers” starts minimal with minor-key bass. A bleepy melody and heavy percussion build volume, but never really develop. “Twinge” is better, with an old-school IDM feel. Synths meander over hard, complex beats. “Lepidoptera” begins quiet and squelchy before glitchy percussion engages. Clicks and rolling bass set the stage for “Rerum Natura.” I picture a slow helicopter flight over water.

Most of these tracks employ a similar structure, with instruments slowly appearing. The album as a whole builds to a noisy climax, then ends with subdued ambience. There are some really beautiful sounds here. Each idea is fully explored. Each track is its own world.

sutemos

Canadian SubtractiveLAD has made his debut on American n5MD with Giving Up The Ghost in February of 2005. Later he has produced a remix for debut single of FusedMARc that was released here, at Sutemos.net. And lately he singed for taking part in the third part of Intelligent Toys compilation. And on the Valentine's day SubtractiveLAD is coming back with the new Suture album.

I can rejoice all of you - it is much better than Giving Up The Ghost but I also must admit that Suture destroys all of SubtractiveLAD's identification that could be heard on the debut album. This unique and unordinary sound in particular was the object of discussions. The new album is traditional IDM - a fine, cozy, clear and perceptible electronic sound and no snobbish references to oneness and no traces of wish to be not as others. This record is highly emotional and unforgettable. Actually, it has been a while I have listened to such a cozy and phantasmagoric work of n5MD and this albums is currently one of this biggest favs of mine.

I have been saying for hundred of times and I will remain hack by saying it for one more time - I am going crazy about traditional IDM. The one I grew up with, the one that helped me with finding the woman I love, the one that sounded in my ears when I created my family and the one that followed me during the half of my life. And in spite of the fact that I have been living in the world of Pop music lately this music still remains very important for me. Suture is exactly like how I imagine traditional IDM style. It is an album that reminds me of unsurpassable Sense, Arovane & Phonem and rest of pearl and emerald musical jewelry. And there were only few of such kind...

I have been continuously listening to this album during last 3 days and I am listening to it today. Four days in a row. Today brings me the best sounding moments.. Everything is so sterile and beautiful; everything is so complete and developed. It is so close to being perfect. I know, I know that perfection is impossible, but SubtractiveLAD manages to persuade me that something close to perfection is possible. I am happy that in spite of the fact that IDM is losing its face within every day, that it mixes, twists, changes, every year I am still able to hold a few albums every year that make me come back, make me fall in love with the things that have disappointed me lately again, makes me hear that pure and unique IDM. Suture is one of the best things that happened to me lately and it is obviously one of the best albums of such style.

Embryonic Again: you must hear it for yet one more time. Rating: 10

loop

Stephen Hummel is a Vancouver musician performing for seven years now who started in the field of jazz/improv music but his interest in the analogue synthesizers moved him to electronic music. In this label he had released his previous ‘Giving up the Ghost’ album was close to the sound of Berlin’s City Centre Offices. With his latest album Hummel creates a more expansive ambiance with some spying to jazz percussion and with a distinctive influence in the 70’s German electronic cosmic era [Tangerine Dream...]. In sum this album is very balance since all the songs maintain that environmental density that it produces interesting atmospheres.

melodick

La musique de Stephen Hummel aka subtractiveLAD est résolument urbaine. Son électro empeste la pollution grandes villes, l'enfermement, la claustrophobie, en deux mots la jungle urbaine. Sa musique est synthétique et déréglée, comme pour montrer du doigt le bug d'une industriel désuète. Pourtant au milieu de ce marasme de sons, de vertiges et de nausée se cache, insoupçonnée, une mélodie accrocheuse difficilement perceptible et triturée qui donnera toute son ampleur au morceau. Difficile, n'est-ce pas de décrire la musique de subtractiveLAD On pourrait à ce stade plus facilement évoquer un univers de sons, d'odeurs, de visions. 'Suture' regroupe tous ces éléments... Bien sûr, le monde de Stephen Hummel n'est pas facile à apprivoiser mais c'est ce charme vénéneux qui le rend si palpitant. Et puis, on va de révélation en révélation quand on commence à le comprendre. Un voyage dont on ne ressort pas indemme, mais ca valait le coup d'oeil (et d'oreille!).

the wire

The follow-up to Vancouver based Stephen Hummel's debut album on n5MD, "Giving Up the Ghost", continues to reach back to when people first felt they needed an alias in order to create Techno. The impassive anonymity hinted at something other, just as the discrete keyboards and neat noise-gated beats all pointed towards something that was beyond the individual self, beyond the human. The absence of identifiable emotion left behind a vast emotional space for the listener to confront. Hummel's carefully balanced melodies and deep production values don't so much fill that space as help define it. Its harsh sense of things collapsing suggests hiding behind a name is more about personal protection.

all music

Vancouver-based musician and producer Stephen Hummel designs his own instruments, most of them computer-based, and uses them to create his music. His second album under the project name SubtractiveLAD sounds very much like an IDM-influenced electronic take on the sound of Canadian post-pock as exemplified by groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Do Make Say Think, or K.C. Accidental. These 12 instrumentals are rather lengthy, mostly running between five and eight minutes, and all follow the same general schematic: start slowly, with a single instrument or sound, then build into a crescendo of noise and beats that climaxes and then subsides. Hummel manages to ring a fair number of changes on this basic outline throughout the album, however, moving easily from the glitchy noise of the opening "Petals" to the funky, dance-oriented breakbeat of "Brokadocious" to the mellow ambient chill of "Rerum Natura." The unearthly sounds Hummel's homemade synthesizers make recall the rough D.I.Y. feeling of the early Krautrock albums, which along with the woozy post-rock vibe of the album makes Suture that rarity: an electronica album that appeals as much to rockists as to club kids.

london milk

SubtractiveLAD is the project of Vancouver-based Stephen Hummel and Suture is the follow-up to his 2005 debut Giving Up The Ghost. While his first album was already setting up part of Hummel’s sonic realm, Suture takes things a lot further and expand on his original template of warm analogue ambient waves and delicate melodies. Here, the tone is once again rather subdued, with Hummel clearly holding down his horses on many occasions here, but tracks such as the wonderful Twinge, Lepidoptera, Your Tattoo or Sleepwalker offer glimpses at more contrasted terrains, drawing on psychedelic arpeggios and slightly abrasive percussive elements. The whole album appears built on this dichotomy, and this gives it a very interesting relief all throughout. Beautifully evocative melodies are swallowed by ominous clouds of noise only to reappear smoother and more voluptuous on the other side. At times, the listener is thrown into vertiginous moments of calm (Petals, Rerum Natura, Embryonic Again) which only reinforce this album’s ethereal ambience.

allmusic

Vancouver-based musician and producer Stephen Hummel designs his own instruments, most of them computer-based, and uses them to create his music. His second album under the project name SubtractiveLAD sounds very much like an IDM-influenced electronic take on the sound of Canadian post-pock as exemplified by groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Do Make Say Think, or K.C. Accidental. These 12 instrumentals are rather lengthy, mostly running between five and eight minutes, and all follow the same general schematic: start slowly, with a single instrument or sound, then build into a crescendo of noise and beats that climaxes and then subsides. Hummel manages to ring a fair number of changes on this basic outline throughout the album, however, moving easily from the glitchy noise of the opening "Petals" to the funky, dance-oriented breakbeat of "Brokadocious" to the mellow ambient chill of "Rerum Natura." The unearthly sounds Hummel's homemade synthesizers make recall the rough D.I.Y. feeling of the early Krautrock albums, which along with the woozy post-rock vibe of the album makes Suture that rarity: an electronica album that appeals as much to rockists as to club kids.