eMusic

Start Your Trial

Western Water Music Vol. II

by

Nobody Presents Blank Blue

 
  • Pick
Western Water Music Vol. II
view larger image View Larger

Rate it!

Avg: 3.5 (30 ratings)

Nobody channels the Cocteau Twins for this haunting meditation on the apocalypse.

  • We Say...

    Review by Hua Hsu

    California contains multitudes: hippies and Hell’s Angels, pro-recycling proselytizers and five-lane highways, the melting pot and the Manson Family, a placid, mono-seasonal calm and the constant threat of earthquakes. Over the course of his career, Los Angeles producer Nobody (known to his mother as Elvin Esetla) has explored the tense fault-lines that crisscross beneath the paradise image of his home state, often to eerily beautiful results. In 2003, he released Pacific Drift: Western Water Music, Vol. 1, a romantic, cut-and-paste tribute to the tranquility of the California coastline, and the lovely Tree Colored See, a collaborative soft-psych album he recorded with Mystic Chords of Memory, followed in 2006.

    Western Water Music, Vol. II is a far less optimistic view of life out west. Estela claims that the concept came to him when he suffered a nightmare in which a massive earthquake severs the West Coast from the rest of the United States, resulting in killer whirlpools, poisonous mushrooms and a weirdly hopeful, Atlantis-like future. But this isn’t a very dystopian-sounding album — ominous, maybe. “Circle in Circles” inches along with flickering acoustic guitars and the hypnotic rhythm of shifting desert sands, while “Ignite” is a tantalizing marriage of troubled, busy drums and carefree echoes of hiccupping guitar. The album costars singer Niki Randa, whose breathy, woozy singing adds texture and a hint of humanity to Nobody’s meticulous production and careful storyline. The gorgeous “Up” closes the album on a note of hope, the dreamy Randa and a chorus of handclaps rising through a foamy backwash of ominous, pulsing guitars.

  • They Say...

    Review by Marisa Brown, All Music Guide

    Experimental DJ and producer Nobody has long established his ability to work with a variety of different artists. He's collaborated with rappers and remixed songs for all sorts of bands, and so his transition to working with singers in 2003 with Pacific Drift: Western Water Music, Vol. 1, proved to be seamless enough. In 2008, for the second volume, Nobody decided to have only one vocalist, Niki Randa, a colleague of his from the same Long Beach record store. The result, Western Water Music, Vol. II, is a conceptual album based around the idea of a giant flood that sinks California, and the instrumental arrangements do a good job of reflecting this, bending and swelling and retreating like the water they're inspired by. This is not a destructive, terrifying flood; instead, it's one that envelopes and calms and changes, and this kind of mystical quality is heard in the intricately layered guitars and keys, the swirling percussion and samples, the whole thing very ethereal, very lush and lovely with only the occasional hints of unrest, like the spacey "Blank Blue," the minor chords of "The Spectral Company," the brooding, Afro-beat-inspired rhythm section. It's this subtlety that makes the music intoxicating, alluring, but unfortunately, Randa does not have the same effect. While she certainly has a nice voice -- smooth and clean and very professional -- she isn't quite able to convey the degrees of emotion that the subject matter necessitates. Her words -- those that can be picked out -- are revealing but cryptic, bordering on the edge of cheesy ("The sea is calm now, you are of the water folk now," she sings in the redemptive "Sea Roars Lead"), but she can't quite back up the ideas. It's too soothing, too nice, too clean, and while these adjectives all have their place, their domination dampens the album's overall feeling and almost becomes an irritant, and makes Western Water Music, Vol. II feel more like an overflowing bathtub than an overpowering, species-changing flood.

  • You Say...

    Write a Review

    I would like to say...

    Artist: Nobody Presents Blank Blue

    Album: Western Water Music Vol. II

    Review Title: (maximum 50 characters)

    Your Review: (maximum 1,000 characters)

    Cancel

    Please keep your comments to the recordings themselves, and be courteous and respectful. Thanks! For further info, read our Community Guidelines.

“ The indie iTunes — Hardcore music fans are migrating to eMusic, the iTunes Music Store's cheaper, cooler cousin.”


Rolling Stone
Start Your Trial

© 1998-2009 eMusic.com Inc. eMusic and the eMusic logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks in the USA or other countries. All rights reserved.

All Music Guide © 1992 - 2009 All Media Guide, LLC
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC

Facebook®, YouTube, Flickr™ and Wikipedia® are registered trademarks of their respective owners, Facebook Inc., Google, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Neither Facebook Inc., Google, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. nor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. are partners or sponsors of eMusic. eMusic uses the Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia API but is not endorsed or certified by Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia. eMusic does not pre-screen, monitor, endorse nor assume any liability for websites, contents, products, services or claims made by Facebook, YouTube, Flickr™ and Wikipedia®.

Legal or copyright question regarding Facebook, YouTube, Flickr or Wikipedia content on eMusic? Please email us.