I created a soundscore for a modern dance piece once. I put it together in Pro Tools, using a version of the software that Digidesign gave away free for a while there. All you had to do was pay $3 or so for shipping, and they'd send you the CD. I think it was version 3.0. Anyway, this piece I made, it sucked. Very. Badly. I figured out how to use the software easily enough (it didn't take long-- it was a stripped-down version), but I didn't know a thing about composition. And all the software knowledge in the world can't overcome that deficiency.

If memory serves, the first step in making my piece was to import the sounds I'd created or sampled into the program. All the sources I was to use sat in a window in the lower right of the screen while I mixed. The image of that window with the sound sources stays with me whenever I listen to 310's After All: there's the snare; there's the high-hat; there's the bass; there's the ominous voice pulled from a film; there's the strummed a-chord; there's the strummed d-chord. It's a problem. Making music for 310 seems so clearly a ridged, two-step process: first we make the sounds, then we loop them.

Some people would argue that this is what most music made on computers is about, but listening to 310's After All, I feel like I've stumbled upon something that separates good from bad. Repeating loops are fine, but the problem comes when these loops are comprised of samples and not homemade sounds. The ear can detect the difference between a guitar that's actually played and the one on "Takamous" here, which is just two strummed acoustic patterns cut and pasted one next to the other. We hear something "wrong" and mechanical in the latter, and it gets boring very quickly. On the other hand, we expect a certain amount of repetition from electronic sounds, so something like the 4/4 bass on Gas' Pop is enjoyable.

The above concept is a little half-baked, admittedly, but it's one idea. This looped samples thing helps explain why After All, which consists of interesting-enough sounds arranged with skill, leaves me cold. I need to hear more than addition and subtraction in composition, and this record never supplies it. No melodic element or fragment lasts more than one or two bars before it's looped again. So a track like "Truce for a Moment," which on first listen sounds like an ominous cop theme, just gets dull after the same four-note piano pattern plays for the 50th time. Same goes for "Off Track Betty," which grabs a single two-second snatch of a woman moaning and proceeds to play it every odd bar for the piece's six-minute duration. The yearning violin (itself a brief looped fragment) and busy percussion can't offset the listening fatigue that sets in early.

With the infestation of short patterns, it's no surprise that the title track, which is an actual song with vocals, is the best thing here. It's sung in a gruff tone and reminds me just a bit of an electronic take on A3's theme from "The Sopranos." A human voice sings a melody that actually carries from one cluster of loops into the next-- the first real sign of movement on the record. Unfortunately, it's also the last track, which makes for a dull ride. A rare misstep for the fine Leaf label, 310's After All was only useful to me to help clarify what I don't like.

-Mark Richard-San