Near The Parenthesis Japanese For Beginners CATMD184

“Japanese for Beginners” is Near The Parenthesis' 4th album via the n5MD imprint and 5th overall. Not far behind on the contemplative artfulness of 2010's “Music For the Forest Concourse” this new album finds Tim Arndt adding more texturally experimental treatments to his signature mix of melodic IDM and Modern Classical. Arndt was intent on creating a decidedly more "electronic" backdrop for the record, which includes what may be some of the most creative drum programing of his career. Building on this new platform, Japanese for Beginners continues Arndt's bias and skill in constructing haunting piano motifs and, as always, brings the pieces together seamlessly. The songs on “Japanese For Beginners” are as hopeful, as dreamy, and as thoughtfully crafted as you want them to be. With this album as with any of Arndt's releases, it is up to the listener to dive in to the details or simply let it play as the soundtrack to your day. [Learn more about Near The Parenthesis...]

the skeleton crew quarterly

There’s language to be interpreted on Near the Parenthesis’ new full-length, but it’s neither Japanese nor Tim Arndt’s native tongue of English. After several listens, what initially unfurled as elegant piano progressions, chiming and lamenting over beds of delicate electronics, transforms into Arndt’s ivory-key vocabulary; capable of circling a situation, describing its backdrop, and echoing the listener’s sentiments. Japanese For Beginners’ focus on piano becomes a mere subtext as the flurry of language over these nine compositions amass, with somber and hopeful melodies, into a forty-five minute web of reflective vignettes.

Rarely does a record’s uniformity remain this engaging throughout. With similar gears – piano, a variety of ambient keys and a throbbing patchwork of nestled beats – at work beneath each piece, Near the Parenthesis encourages strong melodic passages to persevere impulsively placed notes which tense and redefine its motivations. Alongside some of his most overtly electronic landscapes to date, Arndt’s pieces never settle, often tying emotional weight into a shuffling, nomadic desire to move forward. With each song modulating another catalyst for the record’s changing emotional state, highlights distinguish themselves regularly: ‘Soft Warmly Straw Raincoat’ delivers an hypnotic back-beat as evocative as the fine imagery of its title, ‘Voice and Radio Bureau’ welcomes some Rounds-era glitchiness, then ‘The Rose and Burial’ steps back into some Arovane-esque electronic solitude.

Okay, those “highlights” listed are actually just the first three tracks, and their effectiveness will largely depend on each listener’s capacity for stylish, unobtrusive electronica. There’s room to argue Japanese For Beginners’ charms as overly pretty, but to dismiss the record on such grounds would be overlooking Arndt’s concentrated ability to score emotional moods with a refined palette. Making the most of monotony, Near the Parenthesis has crafted the first great electronic record of 2011. [sic]magazine

Near The Parenthesis is one of those artists who is well known and highly regarded within certain circles, yet unknown within others. His consistency has secured a permanent berth at genre ‘centre of excellence’, n5MD but for those only just discovering his music Near The Parenthesis may fall into the category of ‘Top quality artist that I need to have something by – but I’m unsure of which release to go for’.

Blended key and piano arpeggios are signature Near The Parenthesis (Whose real name is Tim Arndt) The effect is like being showered in music. Big, splashy drops of loveliness fall upon the listener like summer rain. Albums tend to evolve in a naturalistic fashion. Actually Near The Parenthesis would make a perfect accompaniment to a nature documentary. It would have to a quality film though – something by BBC or Discovery. This music develops with dignity, restrained growth, ebbing and flowing, that kind of thing. No great overtures or explosive climaxing. All very agreeable. Sometimes tracks meander. Sometimes you aren’t quite aware that you crossed over to a different piece. I love it.

The difference with Japanese for Beginners, slight though it may be, is in the programming. Things are a little more IDM now. Beats are more purposeful. The air crackles with electricity and it’s clear something mechanical is walking this forest. Take a piece like ‘In Regard To Water’ and you hear all manner of influences from labelmate/friend Arc Lab all the way back to Harold Budd.

Near The Parenthesis will get the “samey” accusation thrown his way, of that there is no doubt. But one persons ‘repetitive’ is anothers ‘consistent’. Like the best of ambient, the real ambient, Near The Parenthesis isn’t background music at all. Anyone with a tendancy to switch off or disengage ought to rethink or avoid becaue I really don’t think this is oriented towards that. Japanese for Beginners to me is contemplative. It strikes my mind that it is about hope rather than despair, despite its air of melancholy. It’s a trickle effect, sure, but hey, canyons were forged that way.

Not sure which release to go for? Try this one. cyclic defrost

Ambient music generally has been fusing with modern classical and experimental electronic music to create numerous sophisticated forms of which ‘Japanese for Beginners’ is a prime candidate. Tim Arndt hones minimal piano motifs, simple, rhythmic and cyclical into an effects environment, creating a warm and resonant ambient landscape. Moving out from the core is a glitched electronic quietude and soft drum beats moving the pieces, pausing every now and again for a melodic interlude, some staccato flourishes and an effects initiated stutter. There are even moments where the electronics almost mash out and the drones become distorted, but the inclination towards a melodic landscape is what instructs these constructions. While it seems from the mix that the predominance of the piano is the key to the album and the electronics as backdrop or dressing, it is a false reading as the effects and electronics cover a wider and more deeply textured range than the piano. It is an interesting strategy of Arndt’s which squarely aims the music at a wider more developed ear that has time for the the stages of classical music while the stalwarts of IDM are far from these arenas and generally eschew them.

‘Japanese for Beginners’ is Ardnt’s fifth album and fourth for n5MD and while Arndt is adding more experimental elements to his work, it still stretches out in an epic orientation for wide spectrum ambient landscapes. Advances in experimentation, in drum programming, in effects wielding, field recording inclusions and all the arsenal of the atmospheric composer are evident in this work. It is an accomplished work that may not capture the ear of the avant-garde will strike to the well honed ear to both historic and technical development. textura

Tim Arndt's fifth Near The Parenthesis outing (his fourth for n5MD) is perhaps as accessible as so-called electronic music gets, as Japanese For Beginners packs nine four-minute melodic IDM-oriented pieces into a fat-free, forty-three-minute collection. Bringing a painterly sensibility to the material, Arndt creates texturally rich, multi-layered tapestries typically populated with piano melodies at the forefront and intricate beat programming behind, with all of it augmented with liberal doses of synthetic and electronic design. What results are less conventional compositions that move through narrative episodes of development, climax, and resolution than serenading dreamscapes of uniform mood. Enhancing the music's entrancing effect is Arndt's decision to have each piece flow seamlessly into the next, a move that allows the album to be experienced as a scene-shifting whole rather than as one filled with distinct tracks.

“Soft Warmly Straw Raincoat” establishes the template with a rich electronic sound-world filled with pretty piano-based sparkle and downtempo hip-hop beats. “Voice and Radio Bureau” augments delicate field of wistful piano playing and radiant electronic atmosphere with insistent rhythm underpinning, while “In Regard to Water” shimmers beatifically, with the keyboards melding into a mesmerizing sound-field and skittish drumming keeping up a soft burble behind. Classical piano playing lends “The Listening Surround” an appealing serenity, and similar classical flavouring emerges in many another track too. Japanese For Beginners doesn't represent a radical new phase in the Near The Parenthesis saga (even if it's clearly more electronic-oriented than 2010's Music for the Forest Concourse), but that need not be construed as criticism as the collection can be heard as a consolidation of the project's strengths. Since issuing Near The Parenthesis material since 2006, the San Francisco-based producer has refined the craft involved in his productions to the level of art, as everything fits together seamlessly and with a satisfying degree of balance, even when there is a large number of sounds in play at any given moment.

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