below zero
In the short span of four releases, electronic music
composer Bryan Carrigan has established himself as one of the brightest rising
stars in the chill-out, ambient, world fusion, and electronica genres. For his
latest venture, below zero, Carrigan
unfurls his sails and sets out for dub and chill-out land, eschewing (for the
most part) his flirtations with world and new age from his last two albums.
What stays the same from the past is Carrigan's adept layering of his mélange
of keyboards and synths, incorporating both retro and contemporary musical and
rhythmic elements as well as his knack for crafting infectious melodic refrains
and catchy beats that entice toes to tap floors and fingers to rap table tops.
When I first spun below
zero's opening tracks, what came to mind were the assorted A.D. compilations on Waveform, as well
as a few other recordings on that ground-breaking dub/downtempo/chill label.
The same high level of production quality on that label's releases is mirrored here
by Carrigan. Nothing on below zero is
cut-rate: synths sizzle, beats pop, and keyboard melodies caress the airwaves.
Even though Carrigan's previous three albums (windows, focus, and passing lights) all exhibited a high
degree of quality in production and engineering, on below zero he ups the ante to where this self-released album is the
equal of any label release. This guy clearly knows his way around mixing and
mastering technologies.
Another trademark component of Carrigan's music (unlike some
similar artists, such as Ryan Farish) is how his tracks can be quite varied
while still maintaining a noticeable Carrigan "sound." Some artists in the chill-out and lounge
genres craft one or two templates and stick with them. Carrigan re-invents
himself over and over on below zero. First
up on the disc, the title track slides out amidst shuffling dub beats, echoed
piano, and spacy synth effects. "premise" glitters with shimmerings
juxtaposed with an eerie, melancholic lead keyboard melodic refrain, offset by moody
background ambient textures and anchored by a slow tempo dubbish rhythm.
"new day" ramps the tempo, energy, and mood up to a pleasant level of
daytime cruising in the sunshine (this is one of those great put-the-convertible's-top-down
songs), with peppery synths, pumping synth bass notes, and a catchy keyboard
refrain. "twist of lime" does an about face and veers into a deep,
dark, downtempo cyber-jazz landscape, with layers of ambient keyboards
underneath a bluesy trumpet line (a real trumpet, played by Carrigan himself), matched
by a wailing synth co-lead and a funkified beat. Later in the CD, Carrigan dips
his toes into semi-glitch waters on "runway" melding those
contemporary elements with some quasi-Berlin touches (nice hybrid!).
"detour" opens with a spooky series of sparkly synth notes, adding in
a dub-like beat and thumping bass line - Carrigan has a knack for fashioning
uptempo pieces that have a darkness embedded in them, music that has bite,
tension, and a foreboding sense of moodiness. "frisky martini" brings
back Carrigan's bluesy trumpet, but opens with cascading, twinkling piano
and synth notes, before dialing in iridescent bell tones and mid tempo trap kit
drum rhythms and bass. One of my favorite tracks on the CD is "tgv"
which, if you don’t know it, is the acronym for the high-speed rail line in
France. Obviously, this song moves at the fastest pace of anything on the
album, and gone is any moodiness, replaced with an exhilarating feeling of great
speed and giddy cheerfulness. The song begs comparison to Farish's work, but is
not in any way imitative (it's much faster paced and, frankly, simply more fun
to listen to than most of Farish's work, as well as densely layered with more
synth elements).
The album is available from the artist's website, Amazon, CDBaby, and iTunes.
