Reviews

Baja

Wolf Hour

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Review Date: 2008-02-14

On the nature of patterns and the comfort of recognition, I’m certain I’ve mentioned them too often. Most of my friends already know I’m an insufferable prick about these kinds of things, but here we go again: being forced out of one’s routine or intentionally dislodged from a groove (or rut, depending on how you feel about it) is inevitably a source of discomfort, distress, and excitement. This is never specifically a good or bad thing – that qualitative judgement depends on what exactly happened that was out of place, and why it happened. Baja’s music functions in this way – the musical equivalent of being pulled from your subway car, and pushed onto a connecting train going in a perpendicular direction. 

Your initial reaction would probably be confusion, followed by a healthy 5 minute period of intense anger. Wolf Hour achieves a similar effect, with significantly less anger. Initial listens are certainly confusing, leaving the listener with 9 songs but literally dozens of segments, seemingly tacked together at random, all of them quite beautiful on their own, but confusing and difficult to resolve into a cohesive memory, let alone individual songs. So I kept going, playing it again and again until the forms solidified. Then I did what I usually do, and checked online to see what other people felt about the album. It seems that some people did feel a bit of anger at the album; the structures in the music didn’t resolve themselves in a traditional way, which left some listeners hanging. I can understand the sentiment, but it’s a mistake, I think. 

While the album’s sounds and arrangements imply emotional direction and its implied resolutions, the actual end results rarely were expected. I’ll compare it to this (then my comparisons are over, maybe): right-brained songs rearranged with left-brain analytical process, or more accurately, the sound of emotional fragments being jostled around in one’s brain. Brains are fun and interesting; only in a brain can you spend 2 minutes grieving over a childhood pet, the next 20 seconds checking out that girl’s ass, the next 1 second thinking about ice cream, and the next 5 seconds trying to remember how to do long division without a calculator. The mind can change channels immediately and with no remorse or reasoning. While I do not think Wolf Hour is nearly this jarring or chaotic, I do think there is a similarity there.

“Meth Arrow” opens the album with light jazz guitar and leads into a pleasant and funk-influenced bass and drum rhythm. Horns announce a short break where the drums become stuttered and choppy. This is only a hint of what happens next, as the song grinds to a halt and the textures warp into distorted computer modem noises and a mechanical beat marches through a darkly robotic score. Of course, this promptly dissolves into a warped jewellery box chime and pitch-shifting samples and ends with a heavily echoed field recording of what I’d guess to be a small European car. 

“The Veau” follows immediately with a gentle keyboard melody, and chopped up vocal samples of Baja’s driving force, Kerstin Griesshaber. His voice is very compelling, and I wished he’d have used it more on this album, but it’s a small point. The song then progresses into heavily cut-up percussion and then moves into alternating sections of jazzy rhythm and ambient sampled textures with backwards effects and low-pitched rumbling. It ends on a laid-back guitar-led progression and introduces the sexiest of all instruments (saxophone). I’d say it’s all a bit too “adult-contemporary” but it’s effective because of the interesting backdrop Baja provides. Realistically, this is the kind of music that should be filling our public spaces and elevators, instead of the anachronistic bullshit that usually pollutes every corner of the urban landscape. Wolf Hour manages to sound soaked in vintage jazz atmospherics, thoroughly modern and urban and thoroughly post-modern at the same time. It is beholden to no particular time or place. Likewise, it follows no particular direction to its logical end, and yet remains instantly enjoyable at the same time. 

“Bous Makel” is pensive and insistent with stuttering snippets of childlike vocals and a full arrangement of multiple guitars and electronic drums and caps off with a wonderful loping piano melody and chopped drums and buzzing square-wave-distortion bass guitar. “Return to Anthol (Ghosts in Denial)” is nearly bordering on comical with marching-band snare patterns and lyrics about ghosts, but is so catchy you can’t really do much except like it, even with discordant organ keys and a clarinet-driven ending that sounds a whole like a detective show theme song (I don’t want to say Inspector Gadget but I just did, in my mind). 

Essentially every song here is packed full of interesting and musically diverse ideas. I could spend much more time describing every twist and turn, but that would probably ruin the surprise. This is definitely an album that needs to soak into your subconscious, and it will most likely require a few listens to feel comfortable, but it’s rewarding if you put the work in. Just for curiosity’s sake it’s worth listening at least once. For enjoyment’s sake, maybe a few more times.

Score: 8

- Jeff Geady