Here's the funny thing about glitch-based music. While it's inspired by the stuff of error-- the scratched record; the errant scrap of rhythm; the corrupted file-- the genre produces some of the most anally precise music available today. In film, the glitch tends to be used pragmatically-- the montage, for example, serves narrative compression. But in music, its use tends toward the obsessive-- it's a way to reclaim the mistake in the name of order, and is often accompanied by a magpie's proclivity for hoarding. The glitch has been employed in conjunction with a broad variety of tones, from Autechre's surgical rigor to Dntel's igneous fluidity. It's an ideal technique for control freaks: Anything that goes wrong in the process of composition has the potential to be cut, pasted and looped until it goes right.
Secret Mommy mastermind Andy Dixon's lively take on glitch-based music tends to conflate process with theme. His Hawaii 5.0 EP used samples that Dixon collected on vacation in Hawaii, while the Wisdom EP used sounds from his wisdom tooth removal operation, not unlike Matmos's surgery-sampling A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure. But if Dixon's methods are familiar, he uses them to produce a glitch-pop prosody that's unique to him. It's conceptual, but it's also hooky, luscious, and startlingly alive. Overclocked percussion that helixes and strobes is de rigueur; ditto lush acoustic melodies that stutter and glide. Lush aural pinwheels blossom and burst at such an astonishing clip that there's hardly time to register one before the next is upon you.
Plays operates according to a single restriction: No electronic instruments were used in its creation. Dixon and a revolving cast of supplementary musicians recorded improvised performances on guitar, woodwinds, horns, and strings, then Dixon cut and pasted these recordings into his usual neon scrimshaw. "String Lake" harnesses sprightly acoustic guitar loops, chirpy strings, and moistly sputtering percussion into a hyperactive bounce, while on "Grand About the Mouth", a threnody of falsetto harmonies, mellow woodwinds, and epiphanic whistles wends euphorically around sharp flecks of guitar. Cheery horns cut clean figures through the brambly stammers of "Diciduism". This template extends to encompass the album-- minutely sculpted rhythm tracks flicker frantically as bright, breezy melodies are sketched out broadly.
While this technique produces invariably engaging results, Plays tends to be most interesting during its genre exercises. "Kool Aid River" is Secret Mommy's take on emo: Guest vocalist Gregory Adams' voice peals out with readymade conviction amid the track's rubbery squeaks, sometimes breaking hard and clear above the mix, sometimes blurring choppily into it. And the fluttery "I Can't Get Down" sounds like an homage to Madlib-style indie-rap, with its helium-sucking vocals and its pitch-shifting beats. With its assiduous eye for bold contrasts, elegant symmetries, and intricately stylized lines, Plays is like a really slick silk-screened flyer, translating visual impact into sonic. You could argue that certain ideas on the album are boring, but there's literally never a dull moment in its high velocity flurry of color and shape.
