When it all comes down to it, size doesn’t matter. Since the late 1960’s, the minimalist aesthetic has proven to be emotive, artistic, and incredibly deep. There’s no end to the number of young musicians who have expanded their own personal boundaries as well as the limits of DIY in simplistic bedroom studios. Tight production is not as important as the raw emotional impact that music can make. Music changes lives. Good music transforms them.
As a critic, I have the task of deconstructing the artistic process. My goal is to break down the cathartic act of music making and discover whether or not a specific work can evoke an emotional response from a listener. The transfer of this passion from creator to audience is precisely what I seek to define. Winslow Homer said of his art, “Just focus on painting. Anything that you want to put in there will come out anyway.” This is one of my favorite quotes, as it represents the bizarre nature of the creative process. You have to make music that represents you. Pop music satisfies temporarily because it is designed for the listener, rather then by the artist. A great album moves you, and it allows you to feel the raw and unfiltered emotions of the musicians behind it. One of the reasons I love music produced in bedrooms and home studios is because it makes the second phase of the artistic process easier. When I listen to an album crafted with care on bootlegged software in an empty basement, I get goose bumps. Every drum machine click, every reverb drenched bassline, every syncopated synth phrase tells me that this is exactly how I am supposed to experience music. Raw, unprocessed, and incredibly moving.
On Sworn, Anders Ilar proves that this desensitized and emotional approach is still relevant. There is less and less reason to intentionally underproduce a record; with the ease of self production in the digital age, it seems appropriate to produce the most “professional” sounding record possible. But the pitfall of modern advances is that every album ends up sounding the same. One of my favorite trends in music is the surge of post-rock influenced electroacoustic “mash-up” artists coming from Japan. Yes, Motoro Faam, Kashiwa Daisuke, Shuta Hasanuma, Akira Kosemura, Takahiro Kido, and Haruka Nakamura are all brilliant in their own right, but with the ease of perfect production all of these artists end up sounding extremely similar, and, unfortunately, bland after awhile. Anders Ilar’s greatest accomplishment is that he keeps his cuts sounding real and present. There is no sensation of distance or slick production values masking something. Everything you need to hear is right there.
I cannot sell Ilar short. He really has accomplished something with Sworn. The album has a similar feel to other experimental minimalist releases this year, but it maintains its own distinctive and personal flavor. I will always respect an artist who has the courage to stray from gimmicks and clichés. Ilar is right at home along side other revolutionary contemporaries like Morgan Packard and Pole, though I suspect his ambitions will have him releasing albums of a much higher caliber, perhaps placing him in high regard with legends like Thomas Fehlmann and Monolake. Sworn is very similar to the early, extremely minimal Uusitalo albums, though he is in his own league as far as originality goes. Some elements of his sonic palette are vaguely reminiscent of two of his admitted influences, Aphex Twin and The Future Sound of London, though typical IDM kitschiness does nothing to restrain his tech happy house-lust.
Anders’ sound is not extremely left-field or purposefully inaccessible to casual fans, but it is indebted to a love of electronica that is best appreciated by die-hard fans. I don’t suspect his style will catch on with listeners who aren’t already knee deep in minimal electronica, but I do think Sworn shows that Ilar has the potential to release a phenomenal album in the near future. But in the mean time, we have the lovely, quirky, and undeniably catchy Sworn, as well as his 8 year back catalogue, for which we should all be thankful.
-Jack Britton