Kuedo - Severant

[Guest Adam]

On his debut long-player ‘Severant’, Jamie Teasdale a.k.a. Kuedo has made an album of dreamlike music, loaded with his own preoccupations with futurism and escapism, that's very different from his previous output as one half of Vex’d.

 

With his intentions re-evaluated for the making of this album, his process to capture them has evolved to a more automatic way of creating tracks, cutting back on the endless technical options available to the modern producer and rendering them at a quicker pace to reveal a lighter, more truthful music, as he puts it: ”On the side of modernism”.

 

In terms of feeling, ‘Severant’ explores the space between the detached world of the imagination and the real-time world; that feeling of coming out of a daydream, on the edge of the drift from the day-to-day grind. Jamie says of this moment ”As reality shapes imagination and escapism affects your choices in the real world, there is a strange relational loop between the two and the space in between the two. There’s a bitter sweetness in that gap, it has a certain emotive quality, kind of in between being and non-being”.

 

Again, musically ‘Severant’ is inspired by related themes. It sounds as if it’s in a sweet spot between the emotive, innately futurist synth soundtracks of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, borne from a time when the very idea of futurism was more prevalent, in combination with musical ideas and inspiration from the emotionally ambivalent, materialist fantasies of ‘coke rap‘ such as The Clipse. Rhythmically the record is influenced by what Jamie calls ”the two ultra modern musics of modern times”, footwork from Chicago, which Planet Mu has explored in depth on its recent releases, and again the drum machine grids of coke rap. Jamie says ”I wanted to capture a really futurist sentiment, kind of melancholy and grand luminescent, so I used the instrument that most evokes that for me - that sweeping Vangelis brass sound.” And on coke rap he talks about the emotional ‘half being’ of the music, the energetically charged, detached ambivalence of the MCs, and the admission that the MCs could be ”fantasising without admitting to doing so.”

 

The title ‘Severant’ refers to stark changes of circumstances in Jamie’s life when the album was made and the music works strangely like scenes from a film: tracks are concise and direct and one of the albums great and unusual strengths is that on repeated listens different songs rise to the surface and the album repeatedly changes and develops in the listeners ears and mind.

 

yay,

 

http://www.planet.mu/discography/ZIQ309

[danshoebridge]

Excellent news - the last few Kuedo / Jamie Vex'd releases blew me away so I've got high hopes for this.

[Solo Strike]

This sounds fantastic, very Vangelis

[cear]

Awesome! :D

[Guest AcrossCanyons]

nice. played the hell out of his ep.

[huzur]

the second track gives me the bumps of the geese

[Redruth]

µ

[Atop]

yay indeed, so looking forward to this!

[ascdi]

This is available on cassette?

[Redruth]

http://www.factmag.com/2011/09/27/kuedo-a-certain-sentiment/

[vamos scorcho]

excellent

[Bambi]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/oct/10/kuedo-severant-album-stream

[Tauhid]

Diggin this. The synths are glorious.

[Redruth]

i'm very excited for this. no more vex'd?

Edited October 21, 2012 by Redruth

[Ceqn]

Just got my CD today! Probably my favorite album of the year. There is still a lot more time in the year though for more releases.

 

p.s. Flight path is one of the coolest tunes I've heard in a while.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Ceqn

[Atop]

very fucking satisfying, great record! µ

[cear]

great stuff indeed

[Guest Lucy Faringold]

I love the feel of this record. Nice solid beats too. Makes you wanna turn it up loud.

 

I'm having a pretty nice time mentally superimposing my own vocal tracks onto this as well. Does anyone else do this?

[Caretstik]

Fuck knows why this was released on cassette, and fuck knows why I bought one (damn my novelty format fetish). Great album though, think it might have a lot of mileage in it.

[ascdi]

Picked this up yesterday but have not listened yet. Am excited to do so.

[cear]

can't get enough of this album <3

 

(needs more pages)

[noise]

the first track is one of my top 5 tracks of 2011. absolutely gorgeous.

[Guest mrgypsum]

the amount of label love that is smacked on this is a little much.... however i usually check planet mu dot com now and then and saw, what do you know, this is a lot of the rosters fav of 2011 so i checked out some bits on youtube and i was most impressed. totally something i was not expecting from MU, looking forward to getting this officially and spinning it more. really good tunes, i really like the quality of the tracks and its nice to see its completely different than vexd.

[cear]

this came out a year ago

still getting playtime

my personal n°1 of 2011

[danshoebridge]

this came out a year ago

still getting playtime

my personal n°1 of 2011

 

Same here, still hasn't left the mp3 player. The guy is an absolute fucking master when it comes to writing melodies, it's a rarity in a lot of electronic music these days.