Just recently, I learned that the independent record store I worked at for many years will be closing its doors forever later this month. Aside from my personal ties, it also seems to be a sign of the changes in the music industry following its first full decade in the digital age.
Well, while the brick-and-mortar record store is soon to be more dinosaur than mammal, there are some other effects of the digital age. Most noticeable to generations of music appreciators accustomed to album formats (LP or CD) that carry with them a sense of flow, connectivity and shared themes among the pieces contained within is the lack of those attributes on many digital "albums." This is both beneficial and harmful to the listening experience - a showcase of an artist’s various talents and/or styles is beneficial, but the stilted, shattered, schizophrenic feel of an album such as Christian Naujoks’ self-titled release can be frustrating at best.
Naujoks takes the liberty of meandering from moments of aquatic, warmly emotional neo-classical to the space funk of marooned aliens munching peyote buttons and searching to recapture their Mos Eisley Cantina fame. Naujoks structures his music around the energy and instrumentation of the likes of Yann Tiersen, which is primarily piano, strings, guitar and a delightfully sparse xylophone. Yet, what is both magical and frustrating about his music is the seeming influence of Daniel Johnston. For instance, in “Off the Rose” he sings from a place so gutteral and visceral that it can only belong to that of children or mentally disturbed adults. Coupled with that, he simply hammers away at the keys in the same chord structure for three minutes, creating a downward spiral worthy of Johnston’s madness. But Christian Naujoks is not content to sit in that space, nor is he willing to make thematic connections between pieces.
To illuminate just what I mean, a few tracks later in “Bloom” Naujoks jumps right into some '70s acid-induced, a-melodious moog funk. I use the term "funk" loosely here, because it doesn’t so much command the body to dance as to move for fear of death catching up with it prematurely. And that is exactly what happens to my patience with this album.
In fact, I barely had my wits left about me to enjoy the hidden gem at the end. To cap off all this madness, Naujoks plays a totally fuzzed-out, nearly indiscernible version of Bob Dylan’s “Baby Blue”. As he smashes the musical foundations of the original, he somehow retains the full integrity of Bob’s vocal stylings.
Yet again, this is indicative of how this record fails despite all its strong efforts. In the age of the mp3 and the quick, polar bear-like disappearance of our old conception of an album, Naujoks might be better served to release a few different projects based around the stronger ideas contained within this release. Perhaps some sort of super-fuzzy collaboration with Grouper to do a set of deconstructive covers of their favorites could work, in the spirit of his Dylan cover.
-Gabriel Bogart