26/01/2018
Review FromVital Weekly
NEPTUNE IS A POWER STATION (CDR by After Music Recordings)
The press text says that this new project of Darren Brown is “from a tradition of Avant Garde
Electronics and experimentation dating back to early 80s”, which is also the period in which Brown
started to produce music with Boy Dirt Car and little later as Impact Test. This new enterprise
receives some cryptic words: “It is said that Neptune Is A Power Station was created in 2017. In
reaction to tension & pressures that have Bio Electronic origins: noises on an unsettled planet:
Neptune was associated with fresh water springs before the sea. [...] Neptune was worshipped as
a god of horses. Neptune is one of the only three Roman gods to whom it was appropriate to sacrifice
bulls”. Brown gets credit for playing the trumpet, recordest [sic?], assembler, manipulator along with
three players on bass, drums, metal, acoustic guitar, keyboards, voice, sitar and percussion. Also
mentioned are field recordings. The whole thing hears as one long piece, divided into seven pieces,
like a performance being cut down to individual sections. The music is something that one very much
would expect from Brown and friends. A rockist inspired set of improvisations, but this time around
the free form improvisation seems to prevail. Everybody plays his or her instrument(s) the way he or
she seems best to fit in the overall sound, but somehow I would think something is missing here and
there. It is not easy to say what that is, but somehow it all is a bit too freeform for me. One hears the
influences of Boy Dirt Car or Impact Test or Brown’s solo recordings (bass, metal percussion, snippets
of taped voices, quite a bit of effects), and all of it is a bit too much of a jam session. Careful, respectfully
everybody seems to be waiting for the ‘other’ to start up; one waits for a fine blast, a cleansing to
happen, but now everybody is civilized and it carries on a bit too much on the same dynamic level,
shifting back and forth between the instruments that are on offer here. Performances are planned
for 2018 and I wonder what those will be like. The press information seems to be hinting towards a
more performance like thing and it would interesting how this music will fit in. (FdW)
