Got a package from Rob McLaren in Kelowna BC. Siberian Dancehall Incident is a solo project where he attempts to emulate some of his fave 1990s electronica moments, paying homage in sound and word to Autechre and Aphex Twin. He’s been doing that since 2021 and latest progress report arrives in the form of …this city was never ours (NO LABEL), which doesn’t actually exist as a physical item, but slips in under the barbed wire defences nonetheless. Enjoyable short burstamongs that never stick around the patterned carpet for too long. The alias name refers to the Siberian Tundra, which, to McLaren “seems like this vast wide open landscape, like a blank canvas…the subconscious of the physical world.” From these metaphysical musings, he proposes to take the listener on a journey to this landscape that is not a landscape, more of a mental location where anything is possible. Some of his music gets close to doing this, depending on how untouched and minimaloid he manages to leave the finished product. When he overworks it, as happens more than once on this album, we get rather overwrought electropop with a sinister bent (‘Wolfman’s Got Nards’), or wimpy elevator music with a synthetic drumbeat (‘Treasures’). Other tracks, especially the puzzling ‘Paralysis Clouds’ come a little closer to achieving the hoped-for elliptical state, but still fall short of the anonymised, high-polish finish which his inspirational sources manage with much more panache. Nor does he raise as many question marks over the head as any given track from Selected Ambient Works Volume II.
I’m finding the item by The Cavernous slightly more successful on its own terms, even though I’m not sure what its intention may be. The Cavernous might or might not be an electronica duo, but since likewise based in Kelowna I’m guessing McLaren has his paws in this particular pie as well. A Very Cavernous Christmas has a nauseating sleeve lifted from a typical “holiday” album you’d find at any thrift shop in the USA and Canada, or else is a clunky pastiche of same…the music hereon, although adorned with festive titles and carols, is bleak-ish synth instrumental music, often turning towards the same pessimistic mode as parts of the above. The Christmas joke (if there is one) is abandoned instantly in favour of another conceit, which appears to be what-if John Carpenter made a Christmas record. Short and not-unconvincing tracks rendered with considerably more subtlety than the Siberian stompers; those titled ‘Silent Night’ and ‘White Christmas’ are quite effective, though nowhere near as “chilling” as the creators imagine. They can’t help adding more layers and details to the production, when to my mind they’d do much better than to pare them away instead, or at least inject more discordant tones in the batter to truly tingle the spine. If I’m reading the press notes correctly – which are likewise rather jokey and full of inappropriate humour – the other member of the duo might be Jesse Barrette. Both the above from 27 November 2023.