Mount Florida
Arrived Phoenix
[Matador]
Rating: 6.2
Mount Florida, the duo of Edinburgh techno stalwart Twitch and
multi-instrumentalist M.P. Lancaster, wish you to relive your first Orb
experience. Where were you when you first heard Minnie Riperton's reed-thin
sopranino trill emerge from the ambient nebula that ever remains "A Huge
Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld."
Or did you come under the thrall of the good Dr. Paterson when he prescribed
Rickie Lee Jones' waffling on about heavenly purple-and-red condensations of
water (taken aurally as "Little Fluffy Clouds")? Or perhaps the Victor Lewis
Babylon and Ting phone prank endeared the ambient house pioneers to the dread
Bart Simpson repressed within you.
Whatever that moment was and is, and as precious as it remains, Twitch and
Lancaster want you to remember the moment right before that. Arrived
Phoenix is an album designed to pop your ambient cherry again, as though
it had never been popped.
Arrived Phoenix is like pre-post-rock. The idea of returning to the
instant before some cultural shift took place is certainly intriguing. Billions
of dollars are spent building and operating the Immenso-Cyclotron 76, a
county-sized contraption designed to accelerate some Fludoovium molecules to
light speed and smash them against an upturned beer can so that physicists
can recreate the instant of creation. Alas, billions of dollars and one
hideously irradiated beer can later, they're still no wiser as to what went
on before the instant of creation.
Across the campus from the physics block, and away from the futile mathematics
of the primal nothingness of pre-existence, we find copies of Arrived
Phoenix (one for each culture studies student, since the disc comes out at
arts faculty-friendly mid-price). Each student can dissect and analyze the
components of the compositions and work out which elements were milling around
undifferentiated before the Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
solidified ambient house and chill-out, and thus gave a stoned order to an
immensely chaotic cultural state.
"In There," Arrived Phoenix's leadoff track, grabs Brian Eno's
Another Green World and sprinkles atop some whibble from a BBC2
announcer that's had some oh-so transformative experience whilst absorbing
some tedious piece of Mahler, or some such starchy can-do-it-all. "Space,
Echoes" lifts a harmonica line (similar to the one the Orb's used on "Little
Fluffy Clouds") and adds some tight-as-a jelly-jar Renegade Soundwave snares.
Twitch and Lancaster leaven the repeated "Lost in Space" vocal sample with
some expert Leftfield dub effects. "Ultimo" follows suit until the deep dub
breaks away into some intense drum-n-bass roll-outs. But so as not to really
disturb any headz out there, the duo slide in a heavily processed female
snippet, similar to the one Mental Generation incorporated into their bliss-dub
"Café Del Mar" 12-inch.
More digi-dub as we drift down "Jamaica Street" yielding to the post-rock
rawk guitars and Jazzanova percussion intricacies of "Celebration." "Yo La
Kinski" is all Hammer-Horror menace (drones, batacuda drums, stabbing synths,
and Eno-ish nonsense singing) and further convicts Mount Florida of being
wholly derivative. But no one will forgive them for "Postal" and their
baffling inclusion of someone's four-year-old loose approximation of Gang of
Four's guitarwork on "To Hell with Poverty."
Arrived Phoenix will not be the reliving of your first Orb experience.
Unfortunately, Twitch and Lancaster have omitted a key ingredient: humor. And
though concluding one's debut album with a reading from Noam Chomsky's
Manufacturing Consent may endear one to the Nation-devouring Godspeed
You Black Emperor few, it's hardly a comic moment. The Orb have never lost
their Goon Show sense of surreality. From posing as Marcus Garvey or as Ming
the Merciless, LX Paterson and Thrash have imbued their dubby chill with a
trickster spirit. Twitch and Lancaster have taken their aural sculpturing far
too seriously. Perhaps rather than trying to recreate what we've long since
processed and continue to enjoy, Mount Florida ought to come down from their
solitary Pensacola peak and seek out an enlighteningly playful Loki experience
for themselves.
-Paul Cooper