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Random Touch (USA) - 2004 - "The You Tomorrow"
TRACK LIST:
CD:
1. Jungle 2:41
2. Jumping off the Cliff 2:50
3. The Inherent Elegance of Falling 3:06
4. Only the Wounded Can Serve 6:52
5. Neutrinos Have Mass 3:37
6. Is That What You Want 2:54
7. The You Tomorrow 4:46
8. Gone Yesterday 4:42
9. All I Can Do 3:11
10. A March of Tomorrows 2:34
11. Undifferentiated Flesh 1:57
12. 97 People With Telescopes 3:43
13. Pick Your Poison 2:49
14. You Define Single File 5:46
15. Solstice Fen 1:53
16. Saturn & Sirius 13:18
17. Some Other Memory 0:20
DVD (Videos):
1. Jungle
2. The Inherent Elegance of Falling
3. Turbulence
4. Is That What You Want?
5. Gone Yesterday
6. All I Can Do
7. You Define Single File
8. Solstice Fen
9. Some Other Memory
+ 6 performances
All realizations: by Random Touch.
Engineered by Brown.
LINE-UP:
Christopher Brown - assorted percussion; electronics; vocals
James Day - synthesizers, electronics; vocals
With:
Scott Hamill - guitar
Matthew Ebbin - camera
&:
Matthew Agnew - cello (on 2)
Special report. Hailing from Crystal Lake, Illinois, RANDOM TOUCH is a multi-media group with founders Christopher Brown and James Day being the only permanent members. Issued as a superbly looking digipack, "The You Tomorrow" is their fifth album and includes a CD with 67 minutes of music and a DVD with about an hour of video. I never was sympathetic enough with impressionism - in any of its manifestations: in painting nor in music. In theory, I easily accept the conception of chaos as the essential counterpoint to harmony, both of which equally influence the universe. But the spontaneity reigning in the music of Random Touch did not transform into something comprehensible to me after many repeated listens and remained in my consciousness just the spontaneity, devoid of any tendencies or purposes. Christopher Brown says: "When we play, it's like entering a trance. At times, I have no conscious awareness that we are making music". There's nothing strange that I am not able to see what they see and to hear what they hear while "making music". Though I have a blasphemous thought that one needs some 'magic medium' to reach the changed state of mind and get a chance to strike into resonance with those strange sounds and noises that form the sonic atmosphere of this album. These men are maybe channeling with some otherworldly entities or extraterrestrials. Perhaps they are lifting the veil separating our reality from some parallel worlds, but they don't remind me even of non-Euclidian spheres of Lobatchevsky's paradoxical geometry where there I see some certain logic and perfection. The video shorts as such are outstanding, just one-of-a-kind. It's like a fantastical movie depicting hallucinations of a madman, shot some marvelous way by a skilled cameraman. Alas, as well as the lyrics, varying from the endlessly repeated "All I can do is make love to you" to something more nonsensical, they didn't help to move me at least a bit forward in comprehending the music. Perhaps all this is just a closed book to me. My numerous attempts to get into "The You Tomorrow" and find some compromised settlement before reviewing it were unsuccessful. This is probably the very first case that I feel I can't be responsible to make any concrete conclusion on the material. So I must confess in my inability to describe it otherwise but saying that all this is just beyond my comprehension. I have no doubts about the innovation of Random Touch's creation, but their music is too avant-garde, if it's ever possible. VM: December 3, 2004 Related Links:
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