Album Notes

K. Leimer: Land of Look Behind


From another side of the musical spectrum, and also the world via both Jamaica and Seattle, Washington, comes another obscure (but not obscurantist) delight on Palace of Lights. Called Land of Look Behind, this one’s a soundtrack including some outtakes from a film I can’t really imagine but would sure like to see. I suppose since they’re there, I could use terms like ambient, soundscape or dub-synthesized for the record. And I could compare it to work with “found sound”, as in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, since it uses location recordings and vocal material – most effective are two tracks based on the Nya Binghi of up-country Jamaica. But none of this quite hits the point that the thing is a jewel that would beggar comparisons with either a) what it starts from, Jamaican culture itself and b) how it proceeds, which is awfully like Eno and Byrne, Robert Fripp, a few others. It is, to be sure, “atmospheric” and whooshy, as the (very few) other reviewers have said. And it’s “dense, polyrhythmic, evocative” too. Even “haunting and dreamlike.” What it isn’t is boring, self-conscious or precious. It’s also not loud. You can let it drift in and out of attentions, or get up and dance (and I don’t mean just swaying; you can stretch to it, stomp to it, do those slow sit-ups that practically kill you). It’s an anytime, all-purpose record that’s made me want all this small label’s releases – to date 7 with two more expected, all more or less supervised or produced by the man who did Land of Look Behind and an earlier thing called Closed System Potentials. I do have one other PoL album I don’t like as much, called Regional Zeal, which after less than a full chance I filed under Wish It Had Worked. Which means something like great title, good idea (“Mouth Music”) and some really fun tracks overwhelmed by the self-indulgent, hey-listen-to-me-I’m-an-artist. In spite of this relative failure – which looked at another way is in about equal parts a success – I’m convinced Kerry Leimer, his studio, PoL, and Tactical Distribution are worth searching out. It’s much more than “potential” I’m hearing. I thing the guy’s really important. He just could be a genius (if, for example, you think Brian Eno and some more anonymous dub-masters are). What’s more, scrawled on a Xeroxed review that they sent me, was this information from PoL/Tactical “born in Winnepeg!” So he’s even in some sense CanCon. You know, like Neil Young, Malcolm Lawry, The Band...