Mike Silver has left the bedroom and is now running up that South American hill. After an underrated 2009 debut LP of mostly instrumental electro-pop, Continent, followed by last year's slightly more scattershot Drifts remix EP, the Montreal producer known as CFCF takes inspiration for his latest from Fitzcarraldo, a 1982 Werner Herzog film about an Irish rubber baron who wants to build an opera in the Peruvian jungle-- but first must haul a riverboat up a small mountain. In keeping with its source, The River EP is cinematic, slow-paced, and more organic-sounding than previous CFCF releases, almost a mini-soundtrack in its own right.
There are still moments of remarkable beauty here, but you have to wade a little bit deeper to find them. The River is at its best when its productions feel most contemporary. See "Frozen Forest", with its Fever Ray-frosty synths, José González-hued acoustic guitar, and R&B slow-jam breakbeats. Another standout is the six-and-half-minute title track, all panpipe-like synths and urgent tribal pounding until a sudden, exhilarating crescendo that might evoke the image of Fitzcarraldo's vessel finally cresting-- and tumbling-- over the hillside. Elsewhere, the EP's more directly nostalgic tracks, whether the krautrock chorale of "Upon the Hill" (which distinctly recalls Popol Vuh's soundtrack for Herzog's film) or the opening and closing ambient synth pieces, are no less elegant and foreboding, though they do tend to drag. For whatever it's worth, you won't find any of the movie's signature Caruso arias.
Like Fitzcarraldo itself, The River EP isn't a perfect, unified statement. The digital bonus version (included with vinyl purchases) swells to more than 50 minutes-- longer than many albums-- and includes two epic "Frozen Forest" remixes. Luckily, both Brooklyn producer/DJ Jacques Renault's no-guitars house rework and UK Balearic duo Coyote's elastic scrawl are rewarding enough in isolation. A catchy, concise remix of hypnotic ambient trip "It Was Never Meant to Be This Way" by Games, the duo of Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin and Tiger City's Joel Ford, similarly amps up the dancefloor potential. On the other hand, a big part of Fitzcarraldo's appeal is that its director was as mad as its protagonist, filming his story on location and without special effects. "It's a land which God, if he exists, has created in anger," Herzog would later say. CFCF has wrought a fine and auspicious record about that land, but something is missing; you can't hear the place itself. In more ways than one, The River EP seems like a transitional effort.
