EP Review : Active Child - Curtis Lane EP
- Written by Russell Warfield
Let’s see what we have here then. Alright, this appears to be yet another EP of blog-friendly electronic bedroom pop. Well, we all know how this goes by rote by now, don’t we? Altogether now: thick layers of synthesiser, reverb soaked drum loops (with a huge bass kick), a harp, blissful harmonies – hang on a sec – a harp? Touché, Active Child. I can’t say I saw that one coming.
That’s not to say that Active Child is a gimmick peddler. He won’t come to be known as ‘that laptop-guy with a harp’. His use of the instrument is far subtler than that – choosing only to pepper his songs with occasional plinks, plonks and flourishes. Far from being a selling point on its own terms, Active Child’s use of harp is indicative of a wider desire to meld the organic with the electronic throughout the course of this EP.
This he primarily achieves through the vocal. Active Child, unlike a lot of his peers, is unafraid to put his soaring falsetto front and centre of his electronic compositions. Like Bon Iver and Panda Bear before him, Active Child enhances his timbre by layering piles and piles of his own vocal upon each other. However, when backed by romantic, reverb-soaked, synthesiser-led instrumentation, the overall effect is distinct to either of the aforementioned artists. Unlike Bon Iver’s raw and vulnerable form of beauty, Active Child’s is laced with a sense of warmth and – thanks to titles like ‘I’m In Your Church at Night’ and wistful choruses which move with the rhythmic incantation of prayer – an almost spiritual feel at times.
This is encapsulated by the Curtis Lane EP’s best moment: the coda to ‘When Your Love Is Safe’. Taking the scissors and glue to his own vocal, Active Child cuts and splices his closing refrain to become just another ingredient in the aural mixture – a gorgeous and enthralling section of music. In light of hearing it, one regrets Active Child’s rigid adherence to the song-form when a more fluid sense of composition could allow him (along with his harp) to experiment with blending the electronic with the organic in more engaging and transcendent ways.
For all its leanings upon choral music and its almost spiritual undertones, this is still essentially a one-man bedroom-pop record. But it’s one that keeps its head above the surface of the choppy ocean of blogs thanks to the breadth of its influences. There’s plenty of solo-electronic artists around at the moment stitching together musical patchworks cut from the cloth of various internet-friendly trends, but to try name another who manages to combine a new-wave styling with echoes of Joanna Newsom is pretty much impossible (nor is any of this to mention his almost unrecognisable vocal alter ego: a Bowie-like tenor which adorns the more rhythmic second half of the record). It’s this, the sheer scope of his aural ambition – along with the high quality of his compositions – which makes Active Child’s debut EP a worthy and compelling listen.