Domenico Sciajno/Gert-Jan Prins - The D&B Album

Domenico Sciajno/Gert-Jan Prins
The D&B Album
Bowindo
04

Yes, I cringed when I saw the title, too. The subtitle, fwiw, is “featuring: do shine’o & prinsjan”. Granted, it’s not a scene I've kept up on really at all but, is it still in existence in any meaningful sense? Is it already time for a retro look at d’n’b? When Derek Bailey released his version in 1997, I already thought there was more than a tinge of bandwagon jumping (though not necessarily on Bailey’s part as I felt he simply used the tracks as background noise in front of which to improvise). So the “whys” of doing a disc such as this are something of a puzzle to me.

Given knowledge of the prior work by these two (much of it very fine indeed), I wasn’t too surprised at what is to be heard here. While not regimentally so, the tracks are rather rhythmically oriented, hinting at regularity without quite getting there. The sonic elements are of the rough electronic/glitch variety for the most part. In a sense, I could understand the appeal of this sort of approach: take the general structure of a given form, loosen the constraints a bit and widen the aural palette, allowing the form greater freedom to blossom. Except, perhaps, d’n’b may not be a form that benefits from this much laxity. One gets the notion that had Sciajno and Prins sublimated themselves to the rigors, artificial though they may be, of d’n’b, had they really plunged into it, more vital music may have emerged.

All of which is not to say that “The D&B Album” is without its own charms. While the opener, “Cascocity” plods along in dribs and drabs, “Stonone” manages to churn up significant energy, the duo keeping the sounds mid-range and higher (I tend to ascribe the lower, dirtier sonics to Prins, the whistling, more ethereal ones to Sciajno but I could be wrong), the whole swirling mass transcending, for the moment, any but the vaguest d’n’b connections. The remaining three tracks vacillate both in attack and effectiveness. “Diamonds Will Do” is a quiet number, its languid rhythms sounding more like early computer music (of the Moog ilk or, if anyone remembers, Roger Powell) than d’n’b, augmented by the mandatory overlay of “non-related” fuzz and static. “Tablerock” begins promisingly, with a fuzzy, flickering beat that whips pleasantly enough around one’s noodle. It actually generates a series of juicy episodes but, in the end, you’re left with just that: a sequence of events enjoyable in isolation but which fail to cohere into any larger idea. The final piece, “Vinexology” begins in a more fragmentary area, making rough use of radio alongside several prickly beats, sounding reminiscent of some John Oswald work circa “Plexure”. In sum, not bad but lacking staying power, giving the listener a bit too much in surface texture and too little in conceptual depth.

~ Brian Olewnick