Beaumont Hannant – Sculptured

Towards the end of 1994, a lot of artists in the IDM/electronica/ambient/electronic listening music (choose whichever term you prefer, as long as it's not the offensively smug "intelligent techno") scene were starting to diversify quite widely from the purely synthesized sounds that characterised the genre. With the success of Mo'Wax and the rapid evolution of early-1990s jungle, a lot of producers were increasingly finding inspiration outside the field of cerebral electronic music.

Beaumont Hannant, like a lot of other IDM/electronica/etc producers, had fallen in love with hip-hop and indie-rock before going on to release electronic music, and so these influences started to show through quite strongly by the time he released this, his third album for GPR.

In "Sculptured", Beaumont Hannant integrates singing, rapping and even spoken-word poetry to a major extent. Alongside human voices, guitars and live drums make an appearance, particularly on "Autun", which is essentially an indie-rock instrumental. Indie/folk singer Lida Husik appears on three tracks, while rapper Joseph Johnson and Scottish poet Geoff Beveridge feature on another three tracks between them. Only three or four of the tracks here sound similar in style to the material on Hannant's earlier albums.

The upshot is that "Sculptured" is less likely to appeal to listeners who are after music that's more typical of Hannant's earlier sound than it is to those who prefer to hear a producer revealing his full range of influences. That's not to say that "Sculptured" is an improvement on his earlier LPs, though: I for one prefer "Texturology", but you might not.