For Miguel De Pedro, ambient music is a savior from his darkest curiosities. Erratic glitch, overbearing gabber, pitiless techno, violent jungle, persnickety IDM—they all melt away under the healing balm Kid606 finds in ambient music. And it's been so for a decade and a half now. Since he first ditched the caustic digital processes of Down With the Scene to bathe in The Soccergirl EP and P.S, I Love You's crystalline, ambient ephemera, the California native has continued to sneak out of the rave and into the chillout room. Recent albums found Kid606 increasingly enchanted by that space: Never mind that 2012's Lost in the Game sported backlit atmospherics and titles like "Gimme Summer" and "Step Into the Light You Fucking Idiot", the soft-focused Happiness followed with a full-on embrace of the changing mood. In a sense, Kid606 has been settling down.
Though De Pedro's habits aren't entirely predictable, he can usually be counted on to issue some kind of musical mood stabilizer sooner or later. Recollected Ambient Works, Vol. 1: Bored of Excitement is that exact maneuver, but it's also something unheard of from the electronics specialist: a piano album. Which actually isn't all that surprising. Given De Pedro's trend towards the melodic, it seems natural that the escape he seeks now is peaceful contemplation. You can imagine these seven pieces as a sanctuary: cavernous, majestic, and warm.
Restrained and stately, Bored of Excitement searches for a quiet joy in austere processed piano compositions. De Pedro never shies from an upwards chord change, favors the bright twinkle of high-octave harmonies, and is sure to work in a resounding strike of every titular root chord ("A Minor", "B Minor", etc.). And all post-production treatments—i.e. heavy room reverb, barely perceptible delays, time stretching, slow filter sweeps, and additional synth washes—are only meant to enhance the soft halo of light around his performances. There are moments, however, when electronic flourishes and swollen drones gently overcome the simple piano progressions, and they feel like a pointed effort to give Bored of Excitement a bit of Kid606's rambunctious heart. Better late than never, "F Minor" and "G Minor" both make necessary ripples in a record that assumes still waters will always be deep.
De Pedro's arrangements default on minimalism and thoughtful euphoria. The techniques suit him, too, even when they seem to articulate his inexperience with piano. Most of the album is set against backdrops of humming incidentals and tonal whorls, which sound rapturous up to the point that they become a nuisance. "C Minor", for instance, basks in the glow of a brilliant counter-melody and its sonorant trails, whereas "E Minor" further muddles already nebulous chord phrasings with the stagnant din they create. With all the mist hanging in the air, the rare occasions that we hear an untreated piano are somehow rendered miraculous in their clarity.
Bored of Excitement's brief liner notes state that De Pedro began work on the record in Berlin during 2012, ending three years later in Los Angeles. Yet the music does little to reflect the time and space he spanned or the changes he underwent—to its benefit. Each of the seven pieces feels fluid and seamless in sequence, like an orchestral movement slowly building to crescendo for the finale. Which is commendable coming from an artist known for hammering Missy Elliott, Kylie Minogue, and N.W.A. songs into cyberpunk dancefloor salvos. Compared to, say, Nils Frahm or even Jon Hopkins, Kid606 is a tourist at the bench, so his command of electronic processes and knowledge of ambient music is what essentially makes his work with the piano rewarding. That Bored of Excitement is only De Pedro's first volume of such music means he's off to a promising start.
