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Ithaca: New puppet motion
Ithaca - New puppet motion - [Urbanite Records]

2003-07-06

In the beginning there were acoustic instruments and then came Alexander Graham Bell and said: let there be light and a gramophone! And a soon as the amp was invented the acoustics started to grow plugs. Side by side with the wired acoustic instruments developed the pure electronic ones. At start there was a clear difference between music played and recorded live and programmed music. The first ones to try and bridge that difference were bands like Pink Floyd and Ozric Tentacles.
The fusion between real and virtual instruments is responsible for a quite an amount of musical styles and genres developed in the last few years and today there isn’t an alternative artist that don’t use electronics to one extent or another in his album. Take Radiohead for and ttheir development through the years for example.
Ithaca leans toward alternative ambient or electro-folk maybe. Short, hypnotizing tracks of environmental music but with inner sophistication.
The single’ theme song “new puppet motion” starts with a smart pan delay over acoustic guitars and blend in some acid jazz drums and dub-like bass.
Helen sings in an angelic voice and interesting accent for the first two minutes of the song and then makes space for an electronic instrumental part with a good strings part.
Actually I liked better the other two tracks “radiorange” and “everything’s fine when it isn’t”.
“radiorange” reminds an old track by Orbital with its floating syllabic vocals.
Its capturing simplicity and inspirational space together with no definite subject allows the listener to drift off over the wings of imagination with no words to be limited by.
“fine when it isn’t” is something between Bjork and Massive attack.
Ithaca are modern artists that can not be defined as pure electro or folk-rock. They both at the same time....

Tal Galfsky



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