WOEBOT

ALOG
CATCH THAT TOTEM (1998-2005)
MELEKTRONIKK

Norwegian post-musical knob-twiddlers Alog specialise in decomposing a collage of samples, instruments like guitar, double-bass, tabla, trumpet, harmonium, flutes, and fender rhodes electric piano via intricate hard-disk editing. Theirs may be a method particular to them, but broadly these tactics are instantly recognizable to the new music listener. Even their trump card, bespoke Midi software for OS X called “the Method” is a familiar sight amongst the concoctions of other high-end boffins of electronica, who might pleasingly be compared to the instrument builders of yore.

“Catch That Totem”, a compilation of previously unreleased and hard-to-find material amounts to Alog’s fourth release after the acclaimed “Red Shift Swing”, “Duck Rabbit” and “Miniatures” CDs. It’s a quietly lovely collection of organic machine music, conjuring images of benign nano bio-robotic organisms unconsciously beavering away at mysterious tasks. Alog’s intensely detailed canvases have a deliriously over-studied quality that conveys to the listener an almost Victorian density of intention. The band is known to spend up to three years working on an individual track. Their music closely comparable in manic spirit and in its particular propulsiveness to This Heat circa “Health and Efficiency”, albeit without that band’s vicious cut and thrust. Concomitantly to avoid missing detail in background ambient sloop one has to turn up the volume high.

Alog apparently pride themselves on their accessibility and why should their obsession with micro-texture preclude it? Much of “Catch That Totem” is sweetly poppy, the rotations of “Becklager, Nicholas” melodically generous, the title track a tunefully lush reverse-skank, and “Soung Sung Inwardly” a gentle piece of shoe-gaze-era Indie snowstorm. “Catch That Totem” may not be the most uniquely iconic example of the glitch genre, but it’s nevertheless rewarding.