silent ballet:

"I don't own CDs anymore." This shocking statement came to me from a friend, who had just turned 30 and had traded her entire physical music collection for the digital. Gone were the cases, the sleeves, the liner notes. "If I need anything," she told me, "I can just print it out." As this digital era unfolds, additional incentives are often necessary to entice consumers into making physical purchases.Mark Templeton has provided one such incentive by collaborating with filmmaker aA Munson for this mixed media project: a CD of songs accompanied by a DVD of visual interpretations. Templeton's last release, Standing on a Hummingbird, unfolded in filamental degrees and tended toward the abstract. The tracks on that album were elusive, dancing swiftly from recollection at the end of each play. This worked in Templeton's favor, as it invited repeated listens; and yet, the lack of distinctive, standout tracks made it difficult to praise the album as a whole.

The new album contains subtle changes that end up making a huge difference. For the first few seconds, we feel as if we are listening to the same album - the rustle and cutlery drops of "aTest" mimic those of "Amidst Things Uncontrolled" - but soon the differences become apparent. Templeton's repetitive passages are shorter, vanishing before we tire of them; his abrasive notes are pared down to a pleasing dissonance; his sound samples seem more deliberately placed. The result is a more organic-sounding album, with tracks that complement each other and could easily have been mixed for a seamless excursion. Perhaps the only reason this did not occur is that it would have thrown off the director. So what exactly is happening on Acre Loss? The album fits comfortably into the realm of soundscape, although it also contains elements of ambient and drone. To create these tracks, Templeton fed guitar, banjo, accordion, bass and percussion into a computer, lightly tweaked the samples (leaving the core instruments identifiable) and added field recordings. One of my pet peeves does come into play here - I have reviewed enough discs with the sound of children playing to make my own mixtape - but I'm going to let this one slide because it's the first infraction of 2009. The birds are okay by me: they make their first appearance at the beginning of track two and close the album out, as if intimating that the natural world will outlast the processed one. Because the album seems so warm and spring-like, the avian guests fit right in, and the hummingbird, at least, is certainly glad that Templeton is no longer standing on him.

Acre Loss presents sources and samples that alternate between background and foreground. The tracks are difficult to diagram because so many different sounds are produced: a glitch here, a hum there; a snatch of banjo, a burst of static. These coloring books are filled with many markers; on few occasions is a single instrument dominant, and even the shortest tracks (at 1:03 and 0:47) seem stuffed. The best is saved for last: the 10-minute "Looking Northward," a misty melange of micromelodies and field recordings that drifts lazily toward a sedate conclusion, ending with the distant blast of a muted horn. The DVD is definitely worth viewing. aA Munson has done a wonderful job of matching the music to sun-drenched Super 8 and Super 16mm video. The effect is one of hazy, homespun nostalgia. Like Templeton, Munson has an affinity for the repeated motif: a man walking across a snowy field, winter branches viewed from a moving car. But he also captures Templeton's organic sensibility with domestic images, finding fascination in the smoke rising from a cigarette or the convection of milk within a coffee cup. The images are layered, sometimes blurred, often swiftly shuffled - another homage to Templeton's technique. And while much of the video uses a muted palette, these hues are offset by striking bursts of color, which appear suddenly, like joyful angels. I'd love to see more releases like this in the future: sound installations for the home. But even without the DVD, this is an excellent release for Templeton and a laudable step forward.

February 2009