"Illbient" was a good idea with a terrible name. If ambient is often a highfalutin' way of saying "mood music" in the old-fashioned wine bar/yuppie high-rise sense, most people don't live in Arcadian forests or soundproofed lofts. As David Toop pointed out in last year's headwrecking Haunted Weather, most of us live with ambient noise levels that our ancestors of 200 years ago could only associate with times of war. Planes, trains, automobiles...many of us can't even get to sleep without a distant roar or clatter hovering overhead.
And, increasingly, music. The dull, subharmonic rumble of a passing truck with illegal bassbins. The endless clank-clank of a reggaeton drum pattern through the wall of the apartment next door. Urban street beats culture gets into you whether you want it to or not. Illbient embraced it, updating Eno's original theories with a little grime under its nails, taking hip-hop as its DNA. Brooklyn label theAgriculture has mined the inexhaustible lode of beats and textures far past its sell-by date in the style press. Its first masterpiece was Nettle's Build A Fort, Set That On Fire, a record that made like Oval and dancehall producers Steely & Cleevie working over a cassette of underground rai hits. Now, they've released their best record yet with David Last's The Push Pull.
Last's sense of rhythm is as developed as any rap, dancehall, broken beat, or dubstep scientist you'd care to throw up. Whereas most post-downtempo electronic music shifts the burden of interest to the melodic/harmonic, Last's swinging beats and liquid metal bass throw all the weight on the rhythm section. This is a funky, funky record. On "Secret Society", a mutant dancehall pattern bumps to static offbeats and a hiccuping vocal that's an integral part of the groove. When Last drops a rattling, chiming melody, it's more rhythmic than simple coloration. "Badlands" filets some microsamples over percolating handclaps, bubbling steel drums, and a one-note bass plummet that'd rattle your teeth at the appropriate volume.
There's also a playfulness that takes it out of the city into more unmapped terrain. "Besitos" plucks and weaves like The West-era Matmos. "Posca Kid" pivots on a mournful little accordion melody over a doleful skank, surrounded by blips, blorps, burps, and other IDM onomatopoeia. There's also a faint taste of classic Black Dog running throughout, the evanescent Orientalism of tracks like "Chiba" and Balil's "Nort Route". (This is no bad thing.) Like the "Coolie Dance" and "Egyptian riddims, Last has found a music that sounds urban and folksy, ancient and modern all at once. Play it late at night, and watch how eerily (and beautifully) it synchs up with both the wind in the trees and the guys playing Tupac upstairs at 3 a.m.
