Paul Dickow ascribes to a sort of morality of the non-committal. He keeps busy with a number of bands and collaborations within the Portland music scene, whether it's drumming for punk band Emergency, working with improvisational trio Nudge, or recording under his solo electronic music guise, Strategy. Even within his solo work, Dickow avoids all the usual signifiers that might align him with a signature sound. Listen to Strategy's 2007 record Future Rock on an especially balmy night and you'd swear it was rooted in grimy 1970s funk. On a rainy day, its fluid repetition seems more at home in the auspices of the early Krautrockers. Still further insight gained by introspection in the dead of winter might place Dickow's solo project in the icy depths inhabited by Boards of Canada.
The fact is that Strategy inhabits all these places at once. He's never afraid to try something new, is rather unconcerned with musical continuity, and is often proud to lack allegiance to an established musical identity. Even the name "Strategy" seems to be chosen to reflect a plan, not a person. In a pinch, Future Rock's closest reference is perhaps Byrne & Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and it is a rough one at that. Now, in a complete non-shocker, Strategy's new Music for Lamping fully commits to Future Rock's sense of ambiance at the expense of its rock signifiers.
Stylistically, Music for Lamping plays more formally, and that makes it oddly more challenging. On the surface, the record is pretty simple: repeated progressions and loops for anywhere from five to 15 minutes at a time, with the odd bit of color and fuzz passing in and out of the mix. It would be tempting to reduce the record to the vagaries of ambient or drone, but the glistening oscillations of songs like opener "I Can't Stand The Rain" seem a lot more selfish (and listenable) than you'd expect from music using those labels.
Dickow is captivated by the ability to distill the enchanted spark powering Future Rock into pulsating, organic works, and he does that by removing percussion and almost all senses of progression. These compositions have stewed over for a long time (some of which came from a canceled 2002 ambient record for Tigerbeat6) but, even with six years of dust, sound like they could have been recorded yesterday. They also sound like they could have been recorded thirty years ago, as is the case with "Lower Macleay", which can trace direct lineage back to Klaus Schulze's Moondawn, and "Cathedral Spark" and "All Day..." which sound like lost Cluster & Eno pieces.
It doesn't always work: "Bike Click", one of the more chaotic compositions, makes aggressive overtures at the outset, but never builds into the dramatic, threatening climax it seems to hint it could become. By the same token, listeners expecting the same soulful electronic music as Strategy's early work are in for a surprise from a forceful but taciturn group of works full of personality but too somber for someone without a stomach for ambient music. Still, Music For Lamping is a nice indicator that Dickow is willing to explore in-depth one of the many styles from which he borrows, and to attempt to run it through an aesthetic filter that is true to both him and the style. It complements his beat-oriented, melodic work by providing some insight into the stylistic backbone of those efforts. In another non-shocker, Dickow seems most committed to a rule that is key to making music: there are no rules.
