cEvin Key – The Ghost Of Each Room

I have always loved Download, as a musician they've been a big influence, and after Goettel's death I found them to be rather bland. I liked Music for Cats, I thought it was great, but when I heard The Ghost of Each Room, I really wanted to listen to it again. I had listened to Download so many times and Music for Cats didn't sound new to me, The Ghost of Each Room sounds different, and I think it's definitely cEvin Key's best work. When I listened to Dragon experience and knew it was a joint effort between key and Hiwatt, I was excited, and then I listened and found everything really sounded similar, and kinda boring.

this was initially a huge disappointment but it's gained respectability over the years. even at the time of it's release, the issue was never that the disc is weak - it's not - but that this was the disc where key made it clear that he's no longer interested in pushing musical boundaries for the sake of pushing musical boundaries. the disc represents the turning point where key enters the fourth, post-goettel stage in his career. for those of us so enthralled with the chaos and abstraction of download, key's choice to pivot seems almost regressive. yet, if separated from the past and viewed within it's own context, the record is an enjoyable exploration of a much more structured and traditional take on electronic dance music.

that's not to say that this completely discards any attempt towards creating a creative work, it's that it doesn't that saves it, and it's not to say that key has entirely severed the links with the past either. the record features contributions from two of the more prominent vocalists key has worked with, ogre and ka-spell, as well as several long time collaborators such as phil western and ken marshall and a few names that i'd never seen before but would show up on later records, such as bill "the ghetto smurf" van rooy. in that respect, it's almost more comparable to one of the subconscious various artists discs such as paradigm shift.

the effects work and production on the disc is really at a different level, which is perhaps the result of the presence of several native instruments sound engineers on the record. for most of his career up to this disc, key used a different but static collection of engineers throughout almost all of his records that were tied to an older collection of gear. as such, there is a strong continuity of what sounds today like messy mixes and really saturated production work throughout his backcatalog; this lifts on this record, which has a much cleaner, digital sound to it. even the "tear garden" and "skinny puppy" tracks are treated to this production facelift, which really isolates them from what they are "expected" to sound like. while they do sound "better", it's still a little disorienting.

in regards to the puppy track, it's probably the most radio friendly puppy track this side of worlock. it is absolutely not indicative of what skinny puppy generally sounds like. the tear garden tracks are a little closer.

it's not just the sound quality that benefits from the facelift in technology. the thing that, somehow, nobody realizes about key is that he's a drummer and that when you listen to his records you're often not listening to drum machines, you're listening to insanely complicated, multitracked and intricately written drum parts. on this record, he seems to have adopted some of the methods utilized by warp records artists such as autechre and the aphex twin in cutting up pre-recorded and programmed drum parts, although i'm going to assume that most of the parts were played live on an electronic kit before they were mangled as it would likely be difficult to pry the guy away from the kit. i fully understand what it's like to have a musical instrument as your best friend and the sense of almost betrayal that accompanies marginalizing that friend through the recording process. it would be difficult to get the kick sound he's using through a machine, but he's also working with what was (and still is) the best sound design software company in the world so who knows...

i'm not interested in talking about nymphomania and i'm not sure why the question was asked but the samples are otherwise fairly well placed throughout the disc.

overall, this is a disc that belongs to key's minimal techno period, even if it does transcend minimalism at certain points. it is recommended within this context, but it will likely not be of much appeal to early puppy fans or even pre-III download fans.