Amazon.co.uk Review
If you're familiar with Simon Pyke's earlier work on eclectic electronic labels such as Warp, Skam and Chocolate Industries, you'll know that the fifth album from this electronic maverick,
Green Park, isn't going to be an easy ride.
Green Park, you see, isn't all swings and roundabouts--it's the sort of murky public space where mothers clutch babies tight to their chests, and unidentifiable things lurk in the bushes. "Tired Of Waiting" sets the tone, stretching ambience until it is harsh and taut, and twisting doped-out hazy texture into an edgy, uncomfortable off-key drone. Later, the pace picks up--the eerily tribal "Spinder" evokes a sense of slowly creeping terror that characterises best the uncomfortable dread at the heart of
Green Park. The only moment of respite comes with the jaunty, but carefully measured "Precision Clownage", which identifies a problem--Pyke's an utterly accomplished electronicist, but he seems unwilling to ever loosen things up. This is defiantly uneasy listening --
Louis Pattison
CD Description
It's no stretch to call GREEN PARK one of Simon Pyke's wilder Freeform excursions. This foray opens with a truly peculiar impression of gamelan; Pyke can't resist contaminating the rhythmic purity of court percussion with a pop-happy whistler, a vibraslap-and-kazoo chorus, and what sounds like an electric sheep giving birth. But that's Pyke, engaged in another round of "Precision Clownage", forever bent on contaminating the electronica gene pool.
GREEN PARK occupies a dusky zone situated somewhere between fairytale, nightmare, andArea 51. It's a beautiful album but uneasily so. The gamelan innuendoes return on "Windup", decaying electro-Indonesianrhythm and spook-show melody deliberately undone by clock-winding, clog-dancing gnomes. "Twentytwo" makes bingo as menacing as Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game". Eerie outbursts and alien murmuring underscore the deep-dream driftof "Sopping Wet" and the boggling gamelan-jazz-funk-house-dub concoction that is "Tin". And if the croaks and hammered-metal glimmers of "Spinder" relocate the magic-frog pond of Kipling's savage, secret India, "I Hope You Like It" sends the erstwhile prince packing on a one-way trip to the rimy nether-reaches of Neptune. After several minutes of silence, agarbled transmission ends GREEN PARK. Perhaps Pyke receiveda sudden interdimensional summons home and neglected to turn off the tape?