The Beige
El Ángel Exterminador
by Nathan Stafford

Sophomore release from local exploratory jazz/pop project

El Ángel Exterminador is a CD I can listen to all day long. The vocals are nice, but not in-your-face, and not really used as a lead instrument in every song. Smooth musicianship, laid-back song structures, lots of nice, acoustic & stringed instruments, and the lyrics are dark and complex. Everything has this ‘old modern’ feel to it somehow.

This record is definitely suited for long play; it’s atmospheric, interesting, but not overbearing at any time. If you have a keen ear, you’ll want to rewind the song, to hear that little sound or echo you caught out of the corner of your ear. The way everything transitions, you can start at the first track and feel the music pulling you in, progressing, until the end, ‘FIN’.

There are two ways to listen to this record. In a set of headphones, scientifically observing every little echo, every unique keyboard tone or field recording; or you can put the CD on, go about your busy day doing whatever, while having it play in the background and still manage to pull you out of whatever you’re doing for a second and say, “Wow, that’s nice!”

One of those moments happened when I heard the main guitar riff in track #5 “Ponce de León”. It’s so simple, so clean, but a little warped beauty, over spacey bass and drum shots. All the while, there’s something humming and whirring in the background, getting closer and closer, only to fade away into nothing with everything else. The hooky double bass on “Underground is Waiting” draws you in, and there are only six lines of lyrics in the whole song. These are just two examples of why I think this album is great.

The Beige show that music can have modern production, and still contain that earthy, man-made substance, but I suppose it is the modern man we’re talking about here. I want to find out more about field recording. It fascinates me.

I first encountered singer-songwriter/author Rick Maddocks of The Beige in March ’09, when I caught another project he’s in called Slowmobile. The music was all created live, using real instruments, with looping and field recordings for good measure. I asked Rick back then about how he goes out and gets those field recordings:

“I spent a week in Havana and recorded as much as I could: echoing voices in a near empty church, a lone trumpeter in a quiet plaza, recorded a flamenco class in the Gran Theatro de Havana; captured a kid on tape singing a dirty little tune after he bummed a smoke on the Malecon.”

I don’t know if any of those specific recordings are used on El Ángel Exterminador, but you can hear little murmurs of things, a trace of something here and there, totally distinguishable to the people who made this music, but to the rest of us, it could be any mysterious sound, man-made or other.

This is not an album that’s going to pick you up and make you wanna dance. The press materials I received called it the “Great Canadian feel-not-so-good album”, but if you are looking for some original music that’s anything but boring, with its intense imagery, theatric or cinematic composition style, and wide range of elements, this album will not disappoint. (5/5)

*The Beige play a CD Release Party for El Ángel Exterminador on January 23rd at St Paul’s Anglican Church (early show). Tickets at Red Cat Records, Zulu Records, Highlife Music and [email protected] Posted: Jan 18, 2010