Album of the Week: Chloé ‘One in Other’

Album of the Week: Chloé ‘One in Other’

16 April, 2010 | 11.15AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: album of the week, chloe, kill the dj

This week’s Album of the Week wasn’t selected specifically with meteorological conditions in mind. But — apologies to anyone stuck in an airport right now — Chloé’s ‘One in Other’ turns out to be the perfect soundtrack for the gigantic cloud of volcanic ash that’s throwing its shadow across Northern Europe.

‘One in Other’ picks up where the Parisian DJ/producer’s 2007 album ‘The Waiting Room’ left off, with creepy-crawly 4/4 beats suffused in a murk of analog synthesizers and electric guitars. It’s a droning, swirling sound at once intimate and alien.

That ambiguity is only heightened by the way Chloé uses vocals, looping and layering them into swarms of hisses and wails. Even on a relatively upbeat, pop-oriented track like the muted, melodic ‘Distant’ — whose bassline offers direct homage to Kylie Minogue’s ‘Slow’ — the nether regions of the song are abuzz in phantasmal whispers.

‘Distant’

Chloé and her colleagues at Kill the DJ have always flirted with a kind of minimalist gloom, via an aesthetic that’s part Patti Smith, part Factory Records, and part ‘Purple’ magazine: the epitome of Parisian cool, rendered in soft-focus black-and-white photos and matter-of-fact sans-serif type. It’s not exactly gothic – there’s none of goth’s campy sensibility, for instance. But it’s a moody sound, and often a spooky one, as on ‘Diva’, where a multitracked choir haunts the upper register, buzzing away like the ghost of Gyorgy Ligeti’s ‘Requiem’ (used in Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’) or his equally ominous ‘Piece Electronique No. 3’ (available on Beatport as a part of Sub Rosa’s excellent An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music Volume 4).

‘Diva’

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The ambient ‘Herselves’ plays similar tricks, weaving weird harmonies over metallic clang.

‘Herselves’

Fortunately, despite the dark atmospheres, ‘One in Other’ never feels oppressive or suffocating. Indeed, it’s a wonderfully porous record, one that breathes. The use of electric guitar, studio drums and (presumably) analog effects gives it a dynamic range that’s unusual in more digitally dependent music. Every centimeter is alive with movement. You need to listen to a song like ‘One in Other’ loud to grasp all the nuance — the buzzing chimes, swooning chorus, strange detunings and unsettling effects.

As a DJ, Chloé can play pretty full-on, from jacking house to overdriven techno. ‘One in Other’ never forgets its roots in electronic dance music; it just freezes them until its pulse slows to a crawl. The album reminds me of a darker, smokier companion piece to Superpitcher’s ‘Here Comes Love’ — post-apocalyptic cabaret music, perhaps. ‘One Ring Circus’ throbs like an Alter Ego single spun at 33, with squelchy arpeggios bleating like a nightmare carousel ride — an awesome complement to all the slow-mo disco and house that’s going around right now.

‘One Ring Circus’

‘Fair Game’ ups the tempo to a comparatively spry 110 BPM, with splotchy vocal samples cycling out of phase around dry, distorted drum machines. Again, you need to turn it up loud to really appreciate its power — just check out that kick drum, which crumples like an exploding paper bag.

‘Fair Game’

Chloé has been perfecting her particular sound since virtually the beginning of her recording career; you can hear early burblings of ‘Fair Game’ in a great 2003 track called ‘Sometimes’, from ‘The Forgotten’ EP on Karat.

‘Sometimes

But ‘One in Other’ finds Chloé moving confidently beyond the dancefloor and into more personal, experimental territory. (It’s not like her catalogue lacks for more forceful tracks, in any case. See, for instance, her Sascha Funke collaboration or her remix for APM 001.) The album closes with ‘Ways Ahead’, a lilting indie-rock number that faintly recalls Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth, with chiming guitars and processed drums blown into a grey vapor.

Which brings us back to that volcanic cloud. I was a kid when Mount St. Helens erupted; our yard was coated in a layer of ash, and our gutters filled up with the stuff. It was a surreal time, especially for a 10-year-old, when people mowed their lawns wearing surgical masks; we would sit on the roof of my house, watching the mountain smoke, and wonder about the end of the world. A few months later, artisans began blowing glass out of the collected ash, turning dead grey dust into buoyant shapes tinted in a dazzling range of rainbow hues. It was a remarkable transformation, as though all those constituent minerals that had been blasted apart had come alive again, given new form as jewel-toned bubbles. ‘One in Other’ feels a lot like that, smoldering in a thousand shades of grey until a single spark turns it into a dazzling field of color and air.

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