You could compare the latest work of New Zealand's Dean Roberts to a band like Talk Talk, but not for the arrangements-- Roberts works with guitar and staticky laptop textures, a vaguer and more evasive medium than the chamber instruments of late Talk Talk-- or for his singing, although the rough vulnerability in his vocals may evoke Mark Hollis. The quality they share is that search for a spark in the darkness, where even repetetitive or abstract passages reveal a drive toward answers. It distinguishes Roberts' work and it illuminates the familiar materials that he employs.
After starting his career in the noise-punk Thela, Roberts has evolved into a laptop and guitar improviser, a fixture in the New Zealand noise scene who travels the world to play art music festivals or to record for labels like Erstwhile and Staubgold; if you're a fan of Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, or Christian Fennesz, Roberts' work is up your alley. Reissued from its 2000 release, Roberts' And the Black Moths Play the Grand Cinema may be his strongest laptop work.
Recorded in New York, it combines loops and staticky textures with live instruments, including contributions by Tim Barnes, Matt Valentine, and Charles Curtis. Roberts starts the record with a lo-fi buzzing that yields to Barnes' opening percussion and fragmentary vocals. From there, he intersperses brief songs-- including a stoically morbid cover of Brian Eno's "Cindy Tells Me"-- with hypnotic clouds of loops that hover like lullabies for baby cyborgs. And while the first half of the record drifts in that vein, the second is fast and anxious, propelled by Barnes' percussion. The combination of live and electronic elements, the range of tones from distant to piercing and the significant shifts in tempo give a full expressiveness to a limited and potentially obtuse palette. (This is also a terrific soundtrack to play behind Half Life 2.)
In the last two years, Roberts has cut two records for the American indie label Kranky that focus on his songcraft and increasingly eschew the laptop for live instrumentation. 2003's Be Mine Tonight was a moody warm-up for Jealousy and Diamond, which he recorded in Vienna with Werner Dafeldecker on bass and drummer Martin Brandlmayr of Trapist and Radian. Working under the name Autistic Daughters, the group is a spare cooperative trio, where every breath or brush of wire and wood makes an impact.
Moody, beautiful, and meticulous, Jealousy and Diamond is divided into seven slow songs, with Roberts murmering above the close interaction of its players: this is slowcore played with the attention of improvisers, and it's completely engrossing. Yet its main shortcoming is its mood. Even when the band crashes into higher volumes, the prevailing atmosphere's bleak, and Roberts sings the skeletal lyrics like the blankets are too heavy to get out of bed. Like Grand Cinema, they include a pop cover, but their take on the Kinks' "Rainy Day in June" is dismal, and the end of the record almost peters out. Every thudded note on the bass still feels like a small step toward a goal, but the album could use more revelations to hold its fragile pieces together: though the search is the whole point, the audience could use signs that we're getting there.
