SIMON J KARIS - "SO LITTLE SORROW" CD

NICE MUSIC: "Nice Music head honcho Simon Karis returns with So Little Sorrow, his first full-length release since 2017’s Madrugada. Clocking in at just under half an hour, these ten tracks further hone Karis’ distinctive brand of crunchy electronic bombast. Emotive yet deeply twisted, they obey a hermetic internal logic that, as listeners, we can only glimpse. Abrupt edits and striking changes in mood from piece to piece are the rule on 'So Little Sorrow', which possesses a raw immediacy that calls to mind the unvarnished, straight-to-hard-disc approach of classic Pita and the playful minimalism of early Asmus Tietchens.

On opener ‘Legend Status: Denied’, a massive, glitching squarewave monody is tickled by sputtering electronic fizz, growing increasingly agitated and dense across its four minutes. While some tracks touch on club music signifiers (like the ominous synth pads of ‘Breakfast Circle: Obliterated’ or the mutant electro underpinning ‘fuckdance33’), much of the music here adopts abstract forms, whether dissolving into shimmering ambience or amping up into saturated noise. Karis’ devious sense of humour, always pushing at the limits of good taste, is on display on tracks like the urgent 8-bit take on To Live and Die in L.A. moves on ‘Templestowe Badman’. Or take ‘Being Driven’, which sounds like a deranged imitation of Kraftwerk’s ‘Kometenmelodie 1’ ripped from a straight-to-video nasty. And while the hissing, buried sonics of tracks like ‘Jams Manager’ align Karis’ work with lo-fi explorers like Thought Broadcast, he isn’t content to wallow in the murk, opening tracks like ‘Roses’ up into saturated technicolor hues.

'So Little Sorrow' is accompanied by a deluxe booklet reproducing a series of watercolours by legendary British ambient musician Andrew Chalk, whose work, developed over more than thirty years, has included collaborations with Organum and New Blockaders (and his own ‘noise’ project Ferial Confine), the haunted ambience of Mirror (with Christoph Heemann) and the endlessly fecund exploration of delicate pastoral atmosphere with Timo van Luijk in Elodie, as well as dozens of solo releases. Chalk has designed (and often hand-assembled) many of his own releases over the years in his signature, meticulous style, often using his own drawings, paintings and monoprints as imagery. Here we are treated to a suite of his recent watercolour paintings, ushering the viewer into a dreamlike space populated by birds, flowers and dazzling washes of colour. Reflecting Chalk’s interest in the illuminations of William Blake, Japanese screen painting and Russian folk art, these images are glimpses into a private art practice essentially remote from the concerns of contemporary culture. While Karis’ love of Chalk’s music is evident at times on 'So Little Sorrow', like on the ecstatic filter sweeps of ‘Peregrina’, which is almost like a beefed up take on the sounds explored on Chalk’s beloved Violin by Night, at other points the delicacy of the imagery might seem at odds with the intensity of Karis’ music; what the two share is simply their dedication to crafting an intuitive, idiosyncratic manner of expression."