Ollie Brown and Sam Britton (aka Icarus) slowly began to make their way out of the Minotaur suit; one pulling the heavy mask of snout and horns off his brow, the other shrugged his overburdened shoulders beneath the weight of his companion. Upon hearing the horrific cry ripped from the throat of Daedalus, they knew the game had gone too far. When the last of the padded leather costume was shed they quickly squinted toward the horizon to see, falling from the sky, the body of the young boy they had come to pay homage to, his graceless and pinioned form careening inevitably into the distant Aegean Sea.
Initially, it seemed like a good idea coaxing the old inventor through his complex and intimidating technological exercise. After all, the strategy seemed to work on their latest release, Six Soviet Misfits, a two-disc collection of the group's previously released UL-6 EP, Soviet Igloo 12", and Misfits LP. The idea was to utilize a series of black boxes functioning as micro-labyrinths-- through which only chance bits of data are allowed to pass-- that would inevitably reconfigure information via wires and circuitry boards as something unexpectedly musical. The group's hope was that by donning the guise of the Cretan half-man/half-bull and pushing Daedalus and his son through the real labyrinth, the mythological duo would happen upon something equally interesting and novel. Unfortunately, Brown, Britton and ultimately Icarus pay the price for this tinkering, as the formulaic approach builds expectations that are seldom satisfied.
Of course, there could be no opportunity for a fall if anticipation weren't raised to a heightened level. "Benevolent Incubator" begins with a jazzy swarm of percussion instruments-- including the ever-present skittering snare-- that gives way to a beautiful melody anchored by a handful of extended tones and the warm hum of various computer generated noises that finally usher it to conclusion. Organic and cohesive, the composition sets the bar high for the remainder of the album, which never fully meets the mark again. While compositions like "Borichean Pintak" and "Nine Fresian" contain moments of uncluttered beauty that parallel "Incubator"-- utilizing minimal drum-programs and sighing electronic manipulations that give both tracks a haunting element-- they eventually devolve into the lowest common denominator: predictable, uninteresting dance music.
"Xot Zoiks", "Despair" and "UL-6" attempt to circumvent this potentially crippling fault by supplementing the musical ideas of various other electronic luminaries like Boards of Canada, Autechre, and Plaid, but unfortunately, instead of fleshing out the music, the tonal clusters, distorted beats, and jazz-inflected bass serve only to illuminate the duo's shortcomings in light of their inspirations. This leads to the aural equivalent of counterfeit inspection-- leaving it up to the listener to hold each piece of sound up to the light in order to search for the watermark of originality, a task both tedious and annoying.
As Icarus and Daedalus discovered, context is potentially more harmful to the creative process than imitation-- specifically, the available tools and employed methods of the artist. It's at the hand of their own limited musical palette that Brown and Britton fail in their misadventure, as similar to the old man quickly throwing together precarious materials in a bid to exit the cold confines of the labyrinth, the group produces an album that feels rushed, weak, and too eager to flee its roots in drum 'n bass and jungle. Like Icarus approaching the white heat of his demise, the musical counterpart can only bear witness to the consequence of a half-realized album that, though it never quite kisses the earth with gossamer wings, is as equally unfastened by the warm radiant glow of its aspirations.
