Sometimes what is not played is more important than the sounds played. I have no idea, who this statement is from (Ornette Coleman might be a good hint, but I really can’t remember), but the holes left open by Tupolev are so big an old fashioned airplane would fit through. This wonderful debut EP has half an hour of serious and intentional noodling, lost in its own universe of the notes played and finds a perfect balance between structured composition and the liberty (or lethargy) of letting things run its own way. Thinking about it, I bet a lot of work, reworking and chipping away of superfluous parts went into the writing of these tracks. And it was well worth it. This EP is free to download on the 12rec-website.
My amazement as to how deep some musicians are able to get into sound without losing contact to a defined structure is still as big as a mountain. Just as these songs are, even if they hide underneath a soft blanket for most of the time. Tupolev, a name I rather associated with a big hunk of machinery that people always wondered about how it was able to fly at all, and did for so long nevertheless, are a young band or band-collective from Austria, who founded when they went and bought their instruments[1] some years ago. Sounds as if those years in a rehearsal space really were worth it. And also gives away that it would be impossible to hurry them into anything. A trait of character no less remarkable in our hectic modern age. Their deep, almost deadpan seriousness mixed with a natural dilettantism makes up for most of the wonders they prepare on this, their debut EP. At six songs and a little over half an hour, this record is more than just an EP, actually, but the term “mini LP” has become as outdated as the concept of dialling a number on a telephone.
The tracks on this record are a quite dispersed batch of ideas and well-structured musical narratives that are held together by their earnest execution. Amongst the basic piano, drum, bass / cello and guitar figures there is some field recordings of people talking in a pub, electronic noise mixed through the flowing sounds, then some vocal pieces and even one song with almost real singing verses. A bottleneck guitar straight from the first album of Sigur Ros. The intensity of a handful of musicians really listening to each other from Bohren & Der Club Of Gore’s black album. And, while I am naming legendary records here, I bet that opening D-chord of “Frigid Stars” by Codeine had a major influence on Tupolev, especially in the way chords and single notes get their time to sound, vibrate and fade out. Most of the time the basic instruments play in a lose yet well-timed and defined structure, with lots of holes to be filled or purposefully left open. This looseness pays a lot for the joyfulness that is transmitted in the basically sombre and melancholic atmosphere of the songs.
For instance, “good ole mistake”, the track closest to the traditional concept of a song, is like a group of musicians who stumbled upon each other accidentally in a seedy, half empty bar late at night and half drunk and decided to play one song together. Which makes Black Heart Procession sound like a tightly wound rock-band in comparison. The other song with real lyrics and singing verses, “as for misery”, almost topples over itself in its own somnambulence. And after all that ending with the multiple self-recordings of the Tupolev Choir acapella, where obviously the band itself loses words to describe what is going on and falls into the theoretical trap of seeing the vocals as just another instrument from the opposite side.
Sounds as if Tupolev are carving out their own unique musical niche, that sits deftly between all kinds of styles: too amateurish for modern classical music, too simple for jazz, too loose for postrock, too weird for the alternative crowd, not weird enough for the people who read The Wire (or maybe not.) Musicians daring to go their own way so self consciously always get my respect. And after having penned all of this down, I wonder if this is going to be the year for great, instrumental music (see Natsat or Don’t mess with Texas for that argument) that transcends the sturdy boundaries of postrock-whatever and enjoys itself meandering into every direction it fancies.
Georg Cracked (Cracked, 03/2005)
Download Tupolev- Tupolev EP from MediaFire
Listen to more Tupolev music on LastFm
Check out Tupolev on Myspace
