Those choke-hazard tchotchkes Animals on Wheels no longer fascinate Andrew Coleman. Drill-n-bass has lost its appeal, too, over the years. Thus, Coleman has abandoned his former alias and style and is all the better for the switch. As Animals on Wheels, Coleman gave the world two albums of breakbeat encrusted noise, and as such, sat on the fringes of the Ninja Tune roster. Now recording for Thrill Jockey, Coleman finds himself comfortable, his avant-leaning precocity embraced by the label that also writes royalty checks for Mouse on Mars, Nobukazu Takemura, and Oval.
Though trading in the frenetic energy of his Animals on Wheels' releases, Coleman is still pursuing juxtapositions. Whereas Animals on Wheels' Designs and Mistakes, and its less frantic successor, Nuvol I Cadira, sought to contrast wounding shards of breakbeats with warm fuzzy melodies, Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt looks for clashes between elegance and distortion. These distortions, created with antiquated 16-bit equipment and soundcards, imbue Coleman's gorgeous melodies with an aliased corona that works in harmony with the very appropriate title that Coleman has chosen for this collection.
Emerging from low frequency waves, "Too Early By Far" pits white noise against a harmonium drone and a piano melody. Despite the white noise gathering supporters from the clapped-out percussion synth Coleman uses, the exuberant piano melody excels and is greeted at the end by a honking bass clarinet. "Pi Four" finds Coleman's piano trading lines with a frazzled, piercing, possibly guitar-in-origin figure, while a Boards of Canada-style rhythm ensures that all punches are above the belt. The crazy calliope of "Escalator Apartment" wrestles with a Nuvol I Cadira-ish breakbeat clatter.
The Bucephalus Bouncing Ball melody and cracked percussion of "Plot Lost Sixteen" take me back to agitated Sunday afternoons, apparently lazy, but in fact fraught with nascent nastiness. "Vocational Shouter" recalls Aphex Twin's fuzzy masterpiece, "Tha," with its anchorless, sinewy chords grasping for just a moment's coherence. "Hang Up Season" carries on the approximation of sense begun with "Vocational Shouter." About the exerting synthline, shrill lines force their way in and out of the background like the angels of death from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
During "Wider Ignorance," Coleman subverts a routine downtempo drum pattern by sideswiping it with electronic piano chords and a melody borrowed from Salvador Dali's mother's musical jewelry box. Closing the album with the spacious-but-weighty "Curse of Knowing" Coleman proves one final time that he's as fascinating a pianist as he is a drum machine operator. With Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Andrew Coleman has accomplished the fusion of avant-garde electronics and poetic pianism. Coleman serenely succeeds where Richard D. James' Drukqs faltered: Coleman wasn't faking when he came up with his album title.
