Labradford have always enjoyed a broader appeal than you would imagine appropriate. It has to do with their approach: rather than adhere to strict minimalism, the trio come across as humble craftsmen content to make quiet music. Like Kranky labelmates Stars of the Lid and Low, they've always been amenable to collaborations, and side projects like Aix Em Klemm and Pan American have been just as rewarding. The latter is a personal favorite, probably because Labradford guitarist Mark Nelson has chosen to explore more electronic areas. Pan American's last release, 360 Business/360 Bypass, was a dense, beautiful record, colored on two tracks by Rob Mazurek's cornet. Nelson reached a particular peak with "Code," a gently-drifting pulsecloud paired with vocals from Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk of Low.
Nelson's newest, The River Made No Sound, is very sparse in comparison. "Plains" begins with a treated piano tracing its steps in the darkness. The path converges on itself, quickening in time as patches of white noise appear, but little else happens. It's a performance that's repeated two songs later, except the plinks become waves of sound, and the hubbub of a muted crowd sample intensifies the feeling of isolation. There's an unmistakably clinical tone to these pieces, a sense that the basic pattern followed by the notes will not deviate from course. It's a feeling that pervades throughout the album-- there's something too smooth about this pretty mood music.
"For a Running Dog" might actually be a bit of a Pavlovian behavioral test. It kicks in with the generic micro-house pads that labels like Kompakt have been treating as their doormat calling-card. Nelson pours warm reverb over the frame, and not much changes for the next eight minutes. The constant thuds have a nice hypnotic effect, of course, but there's zero variation and it quickly gets dull. There's more going on in "Red Line," from the faint locomotive chugging to the high-pitched guitar noodling. The expected glitch tick pumps in, though, and nine minutes pass in monotony.
Obviously, the tactic is to draw attention as much to the space between the beats as the actual sounds themselves. Like the illusion that occurs on a grid, where the eye sees black squares on the white lines that intersect, the listener realizes a sort of inverse rhythm. The problem is that the negative space opened up on The River Made No Sound is occasionally interesting but really not all that worthy of your attention. Artists like Nurse With Wound and John Zorn have done incredible things with the tension underlying these relationships, but Pan American seem to falter here. You find yourself waiting for surprises. They occur only occasionally, as on "Raised Wall," which dispels the constancy of "Red Line" with a flux of samples and distortion a la Oval.
"St. Cloud" exemplifies the progressive flow that we want: marbles roll scattershot across the speakers, and the bass rumbles a little later in each passing measure. Unfortunately, unless you have one of those air-traffic-control-type headphones, you're only going to hear it well on your home speakers. Another strike: this album won't sound good on little earbuds. The low rating isn't to suggest that the music here is necessarily bad, just that it's disappointingly average. There's little that distinguishes itself, and the 4/4 thump dominates the mix and too often grounds the ethereal elements that should be set free. The bass isn't as sexy as the throbbing dub of Berlin's Rhythm & Sound, nor as brilliantly paranoiac and confining as Plastikman's Consumed. The River Made No Sound: movement without evidence. It's a clear summation, but it doesn't make for very compelling music.
