What a happy album! Happy like mica reflecting from boulders, happy like shovels in a sandbox. If you like the sound of ice cream trucks, music boxes, and wind chimes, this may be just the album for you.Tomavistas collects Dot Tape Dot’s scattered tracks from compilations, mix tapes, and CD-r’s in one compact, plastic cabinet, but this is more than just an album for completists, because none of these cuts are compost. Dot Tape Dot (formerly .tape.) has released what is already one of 2008’s top electronic albums.
Tomavistas features such instruments as toy accordion, bouzouki, and glockenspiel, augmented by toy Spanish guitar and the occasional violin. These instruments offer clean-cut edges and a sparkly sheen, like the crystals seen suspended on the album’s cover above a town of wooden blocks. The music is comparable to the instrumental tracks of Part Timer’s Blue and Mum’s Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy. Most feature gently looped patterns, none of which overstay their welcome. This is the direction I wish that Lullatone had taken, rather than veering into the childlike and twee.
The songs on Tomavistas can be loosely divided into three categories: 1) tracks built around synthesized patterns; 2) tracks anchored by acoustic guitar; and 3) tracks with no obvious structure, which operate more as tone poems. In the synth-driven category, we find “Rosa Luxemburger,” “A Russian poet,” and “Making waves,” the three oldest songs on the compilation. After 2004, Dani (the band’s recruiter) began to move away from this sound, making guitar a prominent part of the repertoire. The pieces recorded during this period demonstrate increasing complexity and a sound knowledge of structure. Of the five guitar-based tracks, “Rounded Tree” is the most endearing, as it includes glockenspiel and handclaps.
The four tone poems, for the most part, come from Dani’s “modern” period, and offer seemingly random elements coalescing to form a whole. “Miracolo a Milano” is deceptively simple, a gaggle of music boxes jostling for prominence. “Disaster” features a muted violin bashfully hidden behind the mesh of other sounds. These tracks show a welcome progression toward layered experimentation.
The quibbles I have with the album are few. While I respect the choice to alternate between guitar-based, synth-based and tone-based tracks on the album, the result is that the listener becomes keenly aware that this is a compilation, rather than a single vision. Some of the early tracks sound more like sketches than fully-realized ideas. And finally, there are few moments on the album when the recording thins to a single instrument or demonstrates dynamic contrast. None of these faults can be counted as egregious, and I am confident that they will be addressed in the future. Two new Dot Tape Dot tracks, found on the Far Away 7” that can be purchased concurrently with the album, display an even fuller and more realized sound.
-Richard Allen