There’s always been something a little disappointing about the standardization of electronic music. For the first 40 or 50 years of its existence, it seemed like anything could happen, that not even the ends of a composer’s imagination were the limit. For the first time in human history, sound could be reproduced with no physical limitations whatsoever. It started to seem possible to imagine music with no historical precedent, unfettered from our primitive ancestry and all its baggage.
Given the sheer possibility of electronic music, the surrendering of the music to presets and pop structures felt like more than a failure; it felt like a betrayal. In its first decades, electronic musicians could compose surreal symphonies of wild whooshes and formless yowls that seemed to have more in common with the Big Bang than ancient mating rituals or religious ceremonies.
In just a few decades, this restless imagination and endless ambition would devolve into derivative synthpop and new wave imitations of pop groups from the 1960s and 1970s, often on chintzy synths and not too convincingly. Plenty of that music is absolutely fantastic, but you can’t help but lament the missed opportunity of electronic music forsaking its utopian ideals.
Both the scope and ambition and the utopian idealism can be found in The Universe Will Take Charge, the first collaboration between DJ/producer James Holden and Polish clarinetist Wacław Zimpel. Although progressive electronics and clarinet might seem like an odd pairing, Holden & Zimpel draw upon a shared background in folk music and trance to create a sprawling, heady, hypnotic 50-minute odyssey that falls somewhere between raga, gamelan, new age, and an Atari 2600 murmuring itself to sleep.
Techno-utopianism is present from the very first moments of The Universe Will Take Charge, and it never lets up. “You Are Gods” is eight-and-a-half minutes of shimmering, rippling synthesizers and odd digital burbles, coalescing like liquid crystals while an ecosystem of silvered minnows flit and dance beneath the surface of some sentient golden pond in a deep evergreen forest. “Sunbeam Path” sounds like an afternoon raga summoned from a holographic sitar in the 44th century on the Rings of Saturn.
“Time Ring Rattles” is like the incessant weaving of 4D translucent spiders. “Sparkles, Crystals, Miracles” is a virtual spring shower, quartz sun dogs surrounding a topaz sun. “Incredible Bliss” is a forest meditation for shakuhachi and strobing synth, sparrows and whippoorwills cavorting around some telepathic orb.
It all falls apart again on the closer and title track, “The Universe Will Take Care of You”, as the flute evaporates into a rhythmic squeak, like a porch swing lazily swinging in a midsummer breeze. At the same time, rattles and shakers sound like evergreen trees in the distance. You’ll feel calm and serene as a monk finishing their early morning forest bathing by the time The Universe Will Take Care of You dissipates.
It’s beyond refreshing to hear such thoughtful, imaginative, creative, empathetic musicians explore the emancipatory power of technology. Art lets us imagine what is possible, what could be, even if our minds don’t yet have images for it. With technology often having a divisive and corrosive effect on society, it’s essential to have artists and thinkers point the way forward, even if they don’t know exactly what it will look like. Holden & Zimpel give us hope that perhaps science and technology might just liberate us from some of life’s unnecessary struggles and strife, after all.