Musique Machine (.COM)

Every Action is the third full-length by Chris Coode’s Motion. It’s also the second for 12k, the American label of minimal electronic music. Motion’s spiritual home…

If you had to let someone know about 12k, you would probably give him this CD, since it epitomizes the label so much. Which is, in a way, a problem: why would I listen to this album among all the other 12k albums? Good question, to which I don’t really have an answer, except that if you like 12k, you will like this album. Good point, eh?

And if you don’t know the label? Well, nevermind, it’s not the best starting point, but it’s still a good one. Drones, microsounds, clicks-and-cuts, glitches, make for a very melodic ambient music. I say ambient, and like good ambient music, Every Action is not monotonous. It has a dynamics as well as a wide variety of sounds.

However digital the music -and the process leading to it- is, there is still something natural, organic about it. This one of the nice development of digital music over the last few years: people were saying it was music for a world full of machines, and some people, Coode being one of them, are here to remind us that it can also be music for a world full of insects. A world of green landscape where a gentle wind blows, scattering leaves and seeds, creating life in an endless flow.

All this is very positive, but I can’t help noticing: I speak more about a musical genre than about a particular artist. Coode is fantastic at what he does, but he is no master: masters evolve and make things move forward. Coode doesn’t. Still an excellent album, for early summer. 5/6

François Monti