Bracken : We Know About The Need

<a href="Reviews/Album_Reviews/Phonograph_%3A_Phonograph/"><img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/bracken.jpg" alt=" " /></a> Breaking out from his band, Hood, and releasing an album under his own name, Chris Adams has done himself a huge favor.  Showing...
7.8 Anticon
2007 

 Breaking out from his band, Hood, and releasing an album under his own name, Chris Adams has done himself a huge favor.  Showing off his electronic skills, Adams created a synthetic wonder in the crumbling desolation of dreary avant-techno on his album, We Know About The Need. Only ever flirting with a typical song arrangement, Adams sets up his tracks on a pedestal of catchiness, examines them, smashes them, and collects the pieces.  The scattered, edged parts are what make up this album.

The strength of this album is its ability to harness bursts of energy from all directions.  The vocals, sung with a disconnected vibe, are heavily mixed together.  The rhythm sections are often highly detailed hip-hop take-offs, like on "Heathens" or "Four Thousand Style".  There’s an amazing variety of instrumentation throughout We Know About The Need, a swirling interplay of post-industrial grinding and phasing.  Because of this strangely calming and detached scheme, the whole album is dream-like. 

Adams makes a firm statement with this album: electronics can be a gorgeous medium of art.  They don’t have to function only for dance floors or background noise.  They can create an extremely complex world that more typical instruments just couldn’t.  As a window into a distorted world, We Know About The Need is a engrossing look at electronica from a several rarely-used perspectives.

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