https://soundcloud.com/pan_recs/lee-gamble-nueme-pan-59
More from Lee Gamble this week, as we get closer to the release of his new 2xLP KOCH on September 16th via PAN. On “Nueme“, Gamble again approaches the haunted electronics of Dutch Tvashar Plumes. The track title seems to suggest the word “Neume”, an ancient system of musical notation that pre-dates the five-line staff and polyphonic music in the West. “Neume”, itself being a “Middle English corruption” of the Greek word for “breath”, seems, with it’s long past and history of etymological slippage, the perfect kind of concept for this artist to sink his sonic fangs into.
The track, drained of it’s blood thru heavy filtering, slowly bubbles to the surface as exhausted organs wheeze and huff with all their might, only to barely emit cloudy puffs of noxious sound. Initially, rhythms are only hinted at here, as muffled clanks seem to echo from the Broken Handclap Factory far in the distance; but before long, the repeated striking of what sounds like a pick-axe in wet dirt helps to fill out the ghostly beat. As “Nueme” moves beyond the half way point, a faint pulse finally rises to the surface when the deeply sublimated throb of a 4/4 bass is added, but the spectral nature of the track merely makes it sound like some secret rave echoing far out from the city!
