Reviews

Boomkat

Lovely set of shoegazy ambient remixes of Portuguese composer :Papercutz from Helios, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, Rameses III, Autistici, Jasper TX and more. The source material comes from his 'Lylac' album, a set of cinematically lush orchestrations neatly blending acoustic and electronic instrumentation with popwise vocals, ripe for the revision session. Undoubtedly, the highlight of the show is Taylor Deupree's magical reweave of the title track, taking the focus away from the vocal to foreground the strings amidst beautifully dispersed electro-acoustic detailing. Chris Bissonette also impresses with the icily distant percussion of his 'Caught In A Halo' rework almost touching on Thomas Köner territory, and the majestic Jasper TX mix of 'Broken Treasure' is greatly worthy of your time.

The Ark

Often, you can judge an album by how it appears; the cover, the graphics, the colours used. When I saw this it looked fragile, gentle and ethereal. For a band to come from Portugal and offer something so refreshingly textured is a delight. Bruno Pereira Pinto is a name I’d never come across, but I certainly know of him now thanks to Sheffield’s Audiobulb record label.

The term ambient has become a somewhat dirty genre, swamped by talentless tunesmiths trying to make a fast buck. :papercutz have bucked the expectation with a simply dreamlike album that takes you away with it. 

There are obvious comparisons to be made with such bands as The Cocteau Twins but that does them a disservice. There is a hidden darkness tugging away at the gentle rhythms that gentle soothe you when listening to this album. 

From the opening track, Ecantemento, the sounds that sweep away at you simply take you to somewhere much cleaner, somewhere you want to be. The album works so well in the way the tracks are layered that you can feel something building consistently behind it. It has a narrative, a course that it follows and pulls you with it. It allows you to create a vision to go with the soundscape the music creates.

Ignore what you’re supposed to see, or what you’re force fed by heavy rotation playlists to imagine. Just slip away to when all you had was the music and your imagination and let yourself go.

Remixing an entire album is a dangerous game; it can fall short of the original material and create something that bears little resemblance to the original creation. Yet throughout Do Outro Lado Do Espelho, the feeling of respect for Bruno shines through every remix on this album. By using Melissa Veras’ vocals as an anchor point on each track, the sounds sweep around her like a gentle storm.

 From knowing nothing about this band or its driving force Pinto, I’m converted instantly by what I’ve heard in this stunning collection and want to hear more from :papercutz. A perfect album for long summer days, you’ll have to go a long way to hear a better collection of songs from Europe this year. A simply lovely album, I urge you to ignore the ambient tag and allow yourself to immerse yourself in this sumptuous collection.

Record Collector

Based in Portugual, Papercutz’s gravitational centre is Bruno Miguel, who’s erected a musical flag that flutters in a clear ambient sky with a hint of cirrus jazz, trip-hop clouds and electro/acoustic lightning. Stitched together with the same precision as Four Tet’s work, his debut album Lylac spun candy into the ears and was a critical success. Miguel has now allowed a number of fellow stuntmen to unpick his stitching and add their own needlework in remixing and retooling tracks from this album. All We Have Left, retooled by Emanuele Errante, shuffles along like gamelin trills, while Gift Of Self (Simon Scott) is a delightful ambient ebb beneath the original vocals, sounding like The Cranberries’ lead singer on vacation. Is Fading (Feu Follet) suggests the minimalist river force of Phillip Glass arching across flat ground towards the sea, while Taylor Dupree’s Do Outro Lado Do Espelho ends gloriously with vocals repeating into infinity. Encanamendo is a new Miguel track – albeit recycling an original LP vocal – with a piano clarity which recalls Conny Plank’s production, while Ultraviolets gets an intergalactic morse-stroke from Croydon via Rameses III. Essential counterpoint to the original album.

The Milk Factory

Originally the project of Porto-based musician Bruno Miguel, :Papercutz soon expanded to incorporate vocalist Melissa Veras, with other musicians joining the pair for live performances. Released two years ago on Canadian imprint Apegenine, Lylac, the band’s first album, bridged the gap between stark atmospheric electronica and elegant contemporary pop music to create a superb hybrid, served by Pinto’s delicate blend of acoustic instrumentation, electronic textures and beats on one side, and by Veras’s softly ethereal vocal tones, occasionally reminiscent of Anneli Drecker, on the other. The album was followed by a single, Ultravioleta, which featured remixes by The Sight Below, Neotropic, Spandex and Signer. This is partly what encouraged Pinto to let other musicians give their own vision of his work. The resulting collection of remixes, published on Audiobulb, features reworks by Helios, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, He Can Jog, Autistici, Astroboy, Chris Bissonnette, Jasper TX, Rameses III, Emanuele Errante and Feu Follet.

Expectedly, the tone is somewhat subdued and, occasionally on the verge of reflective here, but, despite involving artists from very different horizons, this album is extremely consistent all the way through, and actually sits comfortably next to Lylac by complementing it rather well. Indeed, while each artist interprets a given song in their own way, bringing their own universe into that of :Papercutz, they all do so very respectfully of the original work by retaining much of the layered aspect of songs. These are however for the most part radical reworkings, which see soundscapes developed into lush new ambient forms or retract into spacious drones, while the voice is in turn wrapped in textures and treated as just another sound source, or isolated as primary organic element to increase its impact.

On The Gift Of Self, Simon Scott focuses on expanding just a fraction of guitar tones into a rising drone around which circles distant voices, while Taylor Deupree turns the somewhat stripped down Do Outro Lado Do Espelho into a rich and vivid soundtrack above which Veras’s voice appears as in suspension. He Can Jog brings things back down to earth for a moment with a stabbing distorted electric guitar on A Way To Emerge, but soon the tone softens again and allows for another dreamy space to develop, away from the marimbas and percussions of the original. Perhaps the most striking remixes are found toward the end, first with the breathy Astroboy version of Lost Boys, which retains the rhythmic pattern of the Lylac version, but dips it into a much hazier sound setting, while he pushes the voice slightly deeper in the mix, then with Jasper TX’s magical take on Broken Treasure. Building on a single looped chord progression by slowly adding delicate piano lines, then burying them under layers of sound, Dag Rosenqvist delivers here a truly magnificent version.

Remix projects can be difficult to carry through without impacting in one way or another on the original versions, especially when an entire album is concerned. In the case of :Papercutz, the great respect with which each of the contributors treat Bruno Miguel Pereira Pinto’s delicate arrangements and Melissa Veras’s soft interpretation ensures that both original and remixed versions can exist side by side, complement each other which retaining their own identity.

Incendiary MagA lovely album this, so nice in fact that I must admit that I haven’t got round to listening to the LP it is supposed to remix: Lylac. The LP has the impression that it floats in a vat of its own making: Ultravioleta is a marvelous example of this; a light breezy fancy that floats like gauze in a golden atmosphere. 

At times there is a feel that we are listening to the soundtrack of one of those “smart”, über-techno cop dramas that the US produces (you know; wondering, timorous piano passages that are quietly promising but never lead anywhere substantial) but don’t let that put you off, the sensations are fleeting at best. And there’s enough sand in the Vaseline to keep the most musically perverse happy. The female vocals often play a wicked game of making you think you’re listening to hotel easy listening music until some concoction of electronics and discordant scratches, clumps and nurdles destroy any worry that things are getting too smooth. Listen to tracks like He Can Jog’s remix of A Way to Emerge, which really walks the line between begging to be skipped or turned off and  presenting something genuinely beautiful.

There’s a psychedelic edge to this record that conjures up some of the Cocteau Twins’ more dreamy moments as well as some of the more drugged elements of Glide’s canon (check out the Emanuelle Errantee remix of All We Have Left). A Secret Search is genuinely trippy, the beats and electronic squiggles disorientate the senses: it’s difficult for the listener to come to terms with the track’s fractured melody and shifting vocals. Tracks like Do Outro Lado Do Espelho also get the “Sigur Ros” treatment; namely, plaintive vocals and scratching, windswept sounds over a gently plodding rhythm, but ‘tis is no bad thing.

Headphone Commute

Last year we reviewed Bruno Miguel’s debut as :papercutz – Lylac (Apegenine, 2008). Miguel followed up the album with Ultravioleta Rmx’s on the same label. Two years later, Lylac still resonates… Do Outro Lado Do Espelho  (translated as “from the other side of the looking glass”) is a compilation of reworks from yet another amazing selection of artists. After releasing Lylac, Miguel was inspired to allow other artists to extract the foundation beneath the songs and erect upon it a structure of their own interpretations. This is an ambitious project with contributions from Helios, Emanuele Errante, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, Rameses III, Autistici, Christopher Bissonnette and Jasper TX. Whew! Are you impressed? Here are twelve amazing tracks by masters of ambient and modern classical composition! The Helios remix alone is worth your attention. Taylor Deupree incorporates the vocals into a delicious composition of guitar chords and harmonic song progression [didn't expect that from him], while Jasper TX scratches on the surface of peripheral hearing with his slow paced filtered piano chords and swelling cinematic atmospheres.

Drowned In Sound

On a significantly lower profile but no less fascinating tip, Portuguese ambient pop musician :Papercutz has commissioned a remix album of his work which reads like a who’s who of contemporary drone. Remix records are often, by their very nature, frustratingly inconsistent, but thankfully Do Outro Lado Do Espello represents a notably coherent and engaging exception. More specifically, Jasper TX’s contribution provides a masterclass in submerged, yet emotionally arresting, washes of sound, while the quite heart-breaking Simon Scott offering is amongst the finest pieces of music I’ve heard this year; don’t let this one pass below your radar.

Textura

It's wonderful to see Bruno Miguel's :papercutz project receive newfound exposure through the Audiobulb imprint and to see his electro-acoustic pop re-interpreted by an impressive cast of kindred spirits, with Helios, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, Jasper TX, and Ramses III a sampling of the high-calibre names involved. A set of ambient- styled reworks of the last :papercutz album Lylac, the hour-long collection's title, Do outro lado do espelho, translates from the Portugese as “on the other side of the looking glass.” Enough remains of Lylac's sound for the listener new to Miguel's world to derive some sense of his :papercutz style. The vocals, marimbas, pianos, and electronics heard in his originals aren't removed but instead added to and re-shaped by the contributors—each one looking upon an original from the other side of his/her own respective glass. 

Though the album title reads Lylac Ambient Reworks, the dozen tracks hardly hew to a single style. The album alternates between electronic songs (restrained and extroverted) and soundscapes in such a way that a funky, uptempo treatment (The Astroboy's “Lost Boys”) is followed by an instrumental soundscape (Jasper TX's stately “Broken treasure”) of wholly different character. Rameses III's “Inside The Nimbus Machine” vocal-less makeover of “Ultravioleta” takes a five-minute plunge into ambient soundscaping haze, and Chris Bissonnette's “Caught in a Halo” becomes an entrancing, 21st-century gamelan setting. Simon Scott's remix of “The Gift of Self” is unfortunately too short at two minutes to register as one of the album's more significant pieces, even if it is a succinct example of Scott's ambient dreamscaping style. By contrast, Autistici introduces a funkier dimension to the album in his “A Secret Search” version, while The Astroboy's “Lost Boys” even nods in a hip-hop direction in the bumping groove that powers the vocal-based song. Beats, vocals, and stuttering voice fragments turn He Can Jog's treatment of “A Way to Emerge” into a flickering and hyperactive three-minute ride. 

Keith Kenniff has a habit of elevating any project he contributes to and it's no different in this case, as his rapturous Helios version of “Lylac” offers one of the album's loveliest moments. The track embeds delicate female vocals within an elegant, soul-stirring arrangement that exudes an epic shoegaze-like character during its slow rise. Taylor Deupree's version of “Do outro lado do espelho” is powerfully affecting too. The 12k head gives the original's emotive vocal dimension ample room to flower, and fashions an intoxicating piano- and harp-oriented arrangment as a support for it. Miguel's own new :papercutz song “Encantamento” introduces the album so splendidly, it makes one long for more original :papercutz material. Though he enriches the track with electronics and serenading vocal effects (and tips his hat to Steve Reich in the mallet percussion patterns that patter alongside the piece's lyrical melodies), piano is the central voice. At day's end, the project as a whole makes one long to hear more of Miguel's unaltered :papercutz material. 

Cyclic Defrost

As is often the case with significant albums in the general electronica field, a follow up album of remixes, re- interpretations or reworks follows. Do Outro Lado Do Espelho revisits Lylac though the of the ear of Bruno Miguel whose selection of collaborators allows for this project to surpass the originals so soundly. Translated from the Portuguese as ‘on the other side of the looking glass’, which is an apt enough metaphor for a translation act, as if the remixers were actively manipulating the sound reflection of the original in different guise, presenting new faces and aspects to the ear of the beholder. 

A remarkable group of artists they are Helios with a beatific version of Lylac, long dreamlike chords and textured ambient electronic undertones with a reverent and ponderous placement of the vocals high on attenuated effect. Taylor Dupree with the title track, displaying keen mixing skills, highlighting the original and heightening the elements while maintaining a faux elegant simplicity. Jasper TX’s version of Broken Treasure provides a long magisterial entrance to the track, before the fusion of elements heightens and forms a mist like ambience. Feu Follet similarly holds …Is Fading with the presence once due to the organ as it holds and slightly alters chord and tone with subtle effects gleaming through and eventually releasing at the end. Rameses III’s Inside the Nimbus Machine version of Ultravioleta displays a high degree of abstraction from the original, opening with the repeated record-esque scratched sample before wandering into streached out experimentation of the elements in a discrete sonic plane of tonal ambience.

:Papercutz’s movement to Audiobulb allows for a wider audience for this Portuguese artist work as indeed the remix project solidifies as it makes connections within the contemporary experimental ambient network. The album heightens the dreamlike nature of the originals, purposefully constructed iconic mythos, deliberately utilising contemporary techniques and technology, along with the musical artists adept at their manipulation. It is a reflected abstraction that will hold your ear transfixed long after the mirror makers acts.

Barcode

Portuguese electro-acoustic pop group ‘:papercutz’ allow their debut album (Lylac) to be remixed by a host of ambient/microsound artists. 

Having not heard the original, I can only take these reinterpretations at face value; however, the key word appears to be ‘fluency’. As a collection of tracks, Do Outro Lado Do Espelho fits together seamlessly to provide a raft of dreamy ambient music led by drifting piano, some textural programming and bouts of wandering female vocals. Few tracks stand head and shoulders above the rest, but the opening piano-piece Encantamento is ultra- soothing, leading into the reflective muse of Helios’s remix of Lylac.

Most of the tracks on Do Outro Lado Do Espelho struggle to carry strong melodies and lack any discernable rhythms, so the record often drifts into almost entirely ambient landscapes that only occasionally toy with :papercutz supposed pop aesthetic.

Better heard in its entirety, Do Outro Lado Do Espelho is perfect for hazy/lazy summer afternoons, where intentions stretch little further than falling into a state of atmospherically induced comatose. If I have a criticism of the record, it lies in its own lack of variety – unusual in a remix album.

Igloo Magazine

A set of ambient reworks was probably not uppermost in Bruno Miguel’s mind when he was producing the winsome poptronica of Lylac. For all the attendant digi-fizz and glitch-whizz, its band-y instrumentation, crispy beat base and gooey she-warble topping were its distinguishing features. But apparently bitten by the Ambient bug (“because of my love for movie soundtracks”), he made a bunch of tone-tweakers have their way with his :papercutz. Taylor Deupree, Simon Scott, Jasper TX, Christopher Bissonnette, Helios, Rameses III, Emanuele Errante, and Autistici lead a considerable cast of expert knob twiddlers. Whether airbrushed and soft focused, or washed out in an oneiric spin cycle, what comes out is a genre-busting blend of what might be designated Pop Ambient, were the appellation not already controlled by Kompakt. Jasper TX’s contribution, for example, might come from (an as yet unheard) Pop Ambient 2011, his archaeologies unearthing and re-burying the riches  in “Broken Treasure,” whose accretions of textures mount over a hymnal chord progression merging into a beauteous blur before relenting. Helios’s widescreen version of “Lylac” (audio stream below) is a different animal; the album’s most obvious Ambient Marquee Moment – A Good Thing or A Bad Thing, depending on your orientation: wisps of gossamer femme vox are festooned breathily over a twinkling heartstring-tug production of Celtic soundtrack-cum-pop epic proportions that comes on like Sigur Ros consorting with Clannad. Exquisite, but too rich for this ambienteer’s blood. Taylor Deupree’s retool is, gratifyingly, more subtle, though still skewed toward the pop of any hypothesized ambient-pop crossover, foregrounding guitar and placing voice in suspension in a distanced electro-acoustic setting, then harping it up with pretty pianification. It could be an aversion on this listener’s part, but there’s more reward in tracks that dispense with vocals to work with texture. 

Best is Chris Bissonnette’s “Caught In A Halo” rework with its chimes and drones almost touching the void of Thomas Köner. Feu Follet’s version is another excellent dwelling on the beguilement of pure texture in classic ambient drone mode. Simon Scott and Rameses III are also true to form, the latter swelling from sounding depths to scale celestial heights, the former setting fire to slivers of distant guitar flame, thousand-yard shoegazer phaser on stun (albeit briefly). Contrasting takes for those seeking less abstracted versions come from Autistici, who finds the funk, among other things, in “A Secret Search” (beware, dodgy vocal insertions), and the fizzing Astroboy’s rework of “Lost Boys” nods to hip-hop – literally – with a headnod groove underpinning its vocal-led take. Do Outro Lado De Espelho – Lylac Ambient Reworks is a set that likes to leave its pop colours showing, and this may suit some; but, caveat auditor, the search for Lylac’s Inner Ambience is one which yields a whole spectrum of findings.

The Record Stack

I have recently been receving a lot of music from artists who definitely deserve more attention. This next band bring some different sounds to the table. Bruno Miguel, the leader of this well developed group, and I have been having an email exchange throughout the past week, and I have finally gathered my thoughts to review them.

This once single act project carried out by Bruno Miguel has become one of the few groups to come out of Portugal into the international independent electronic music scene. :Papercutz pursue the perfect balance between acoustic and electronic sounds. What makes up this wonderfully crafted group are their live instrumentals, along with their spacious electronic sounds filled with lush ambience and savoring dream like melodies, while the delightfully soft vocals are wrapped in many layers to form a primary organic ingredient specific to this bands sound. :Papercutz will swell you into another world making you yearn for more of those precious melodies and calm soaring vocals.

Savaran Music

Back in April this year I read a review http://www.tokafi.com/newsitems/cd-feature-papercutz-lylac/ about the new Portuguese electronic project known as Papercutz led by Bruno Miguel and their debut album Lylac, released by Apegenine Recordings (Canada) in 2008 http://store.papercutzed.com/ .  The sound was exciting and new and blended electronic, electro-acoustic and field recorded sounds with English and Portuguese vocals in a heady mix of pop and avant-garde/electro-classical genres. It seemed cutting edge to me and the full album did not disappoint when it arrived – it has been much played over the rest of this year.

I was therefore delighted when I found out that one of my favourite experimental electronic music labels in the UK, Audiobulb http://www.audiobulb.com/ ,was bringing out a remix album of Lylac featuring an impressive array of the most respected artists in the world of electronic, drone and electro-acoustic ambient music. 

Released in April 2010 Do Outro Lado Do Espelho (Lylac Ambient Reworks) includes 12 remix tracks by Helios, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, Rameses III, Autistici, Jasper TX, Emanuele Errante, He Can Jog, Chris Bissonnette, The Astroboy and Feu Follet. All of the tracks show a great respect for the original material and tend to develop around the haunting/smoky vocal phrases of Melissa Veras’s voice or subtle melodic phrases from the acoustic instrumentation of the source material. The remix album complements the original Lylac to such an extent that you would have thought it was from a double disc original release.

Having said that the ambient reworks definitely reflect the artistic process of their originators and the Lylac tracks have been throughly disected, morphed, stretched or compressed by master surgeons then re-assembled into an album playing out in some sort of dreamy parallel universe where all the same elements exist, but fused into utterly different forms.

My favourite interpretations include the magical Helios remix which is now accompanied by a fantastic CGI based video directed by Daihei Shibata http://vimeo.com/11796577 and the sublime Taylor Deupree remix of Do outro lado do Espelho which interweaves fragmented guitar lines with evocative vocal phrases and TD’s unique processed field recordings. The latter track also has its own video directed by Javi Devitt http://vimeo.com/13345156

Bruno Miguel is now recording his second album under the Papercutz moniker which will place the electronics more in the background, giving way to the vocals and acoustic instruments. He has also hinted that a further ambient remix may arise from the next project. I look forward to seeing what this innovative artist and his musical collaborators come up with next and I can thoroughly recommend both the remix album and the original Lylac album. 

Ambient Blog

Well here's for something completely different!

Usually, ambientblog is not the platform to promote portuguese electronic pop music - however adventurous it may be. But after releasing Lylac - adventurous electronic cut-up pop music featuring Melissa Veras on vocals, :papercutz main performer Bruno Miguel grew fond of the ambient genre ("much because of my love for movie soundtracks") - and somehow managed to an impressive list of ambient music artists to rework the music on Lylac. 

To get you interested: "Do Outro Lado De Espelho - Lylac Ambient Reworks" contains remixes by folks like Helios, Emanuele Errante, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, Autistici, Christopher Bisonnette, Jasper TX - and that's not even everybody on the list! 

Names like that are enough to trigger anyone interested in contemporary ambient music to check out this album. I was going to write "to run to their record store" - but I'm afraid most records stores will not stock music like this so you might check out the audiobulb website to order it directly from there.

While Lylac is adventurous enough to be enjoyed in it's own right (one seldom hears an album defying the borders of different genres so effectively) - for Do Outro Lado De Espelho ("From the Other Side of the Looking Glass") Bruno Miguel can be credited for opening a whole new perspective on ambience in music. 

It still pop music, still, but with a dreamy, ethereal and cinematic twist seldom heard otherwise.

All remixing artists add a personal dimension to the original tracks. Their work is not ambient music in the 'soothing'sense: some of the reworks are emotionally quite harsh confronting. But on the other hand there's some extremely romantic and touching remixes, like the Taylor Deupree version of Do Outro Lado de Espelho or the Helios Lylac remix. 

Ambient music has its own unwritten conventions of how it should sound, of when it's "deep" and of when it might even be "art". From out of nowhere, this stunning :papercutz release overthrows all conventions and shows there can be a perfect blend of ambient-, electronic and pop music. 

All contributors to this album should be credited for that, as well as audiobulb for releasing a gem like this 'Do Outro Lado de Espelho (Lylac ambient reworks)' marks the end of a chapter for :papercutz and simultaneously opens a door for a new one." Bruno Miguel states. So who knows what the future may bring...!

AA Music

:papercutz, the Portuguese Electronic music project formed in 2005 by the only Bruno Miguel,  after the releasing of the critical acclaimed album Lylac in 2008, returns after two years with a new remix album: Do outro lado do espelho (Lylac ambient reworks), It featured relevant ambient music artists like Taylor Deupree, Keith Kenniff, Simon Scott among many others that Bruno personally invited to work on his music.

The result is a remarkable album characterized by dreaming atmospheres and the use of well chosen sounds, clinks, background noises, repeated lines, voice echoing in the distance, all contributes to create a particular arrangement for every tune.

The lead vocalist Melissa Veras sings gently, in Lylac her vocals are almost a sigh, while in Encantamento the piano is the absolute starring, it could be a piece of classical music, with its moving crescendo.

The downside of this kind of work is that at an absent-minded listen tunes could sound very similar each other and this is the risk that ambient music takes in general, but the bright side is that it will be definitely appreciated by lovers of this genre for the real quality of this project.

Bruno Miguel made a brave choice, or a cunning one, but experimenting with music is always a good thing.