LV - Ancient Mechanisms

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  • LV's Si Williams and Will Horrocks are natural collaborators. The UK duo's rhythms hold up each guest artist like scaffolding—it usually feels like they're providing structure rather than content. The approach has resulted in two stellar albums with Joshua Idehen and the kwaito-inspired Sebenza with a cast of South African artists. Ancient Mechanisms, too, is largely inspired by an outside musician, in this case Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan. Williams and Horrocks were first introduced to Hamasyan by Gilles Peterson in 2012, who encouraged them to work together for a BBC Radio Session (he later gave them an award for it). This inspired LV to further explore the piano and discover the possibilities of acoustic instrumentation. The result is an album that's unusually baroque for Brownswood, one that sees LV in completely unfamiliar waters and struggling to stay afloat. Ancient Mechanisms is roughly split between LV's own piano explorations and their collaborations with Hamasyan. The five collaborations vary in quality, though Williams and Horrocks rarely mesh with Hamasyan's virtuosic piano playing. Sometimes, as on "Hammers And Roses" and "Ruiselede," Hamasyan dazzles with his fingers, and the duo seem unsure how to react. They either saddle Hamasyan's piano with a blasé jazz beat, or dropping hesitant percussive sounds here and there, as if afraid to rock the boat. It's when the pair move past their habits that the collaborating works. "Yarimo" closes the album with a stirring, weightless ballad featuring Hamasyan's vocals. The equally floaty "Infinite Spring" is the album's clear highlight, though the piano is almost nowhere to be heard. Instead, it's mostly ambient, full of heavily manipulated sounds and strange melodic ideas, more like a piano abstraction than a straight recording. That last idea defines the rest of Ancient Mechanisms, where the duo sometimes sound like they're picking apart a piano to see what noise they can make with its inner workings. You can almost hear them quizzically examining the instrument on "Dar Souiri," which starts out abstract and moves into generic prettiness until a broken beat takes it somewhere vaguely interesting. Then there are moments like "Gravity Escapement" and "Dansearstraat," which are basically chilled-out versions of typical LV tracks. Though its concept—and the collaboration behind it—is rather ambitious, Ancient Mechanisms is ultimately inconsequential. Williams and Horrocks never gel with Hamasyan as tightly as they have with past collaborators, and having his much busier performances sprinkled among the duo's experiments only makes the album more disjointed. Still, Ancient Mechanisms deserves credit for trying new things, even if those things never manage to get off the ground.
  • Tracklist
      01. Carillon 02. Ruiselede feat. Tigran Hamasyan 03. Gravity Escapement 04. Transition 05. Quick Return 06. Hammers And Roses feat. Tigran Hamasyan 07. Dar Souiri 08. Broken Movement 09. Infinite Spring feat. Tigran Hamasyan 10. Dansaerstraat 11. Detent 12. Jump And Rech feat. Tigran Hamasyan 13. Balance Spring 14. Yarimo feat. Tigran Hamasyan
RA