When I think back to how we learned about musical artists back in the 1980s and 90s I have to shake my head. It’s amazing anyone who didn’t live in a major city could discover anything outside what was fed to us via mainstream radio, magazines, and MTV. If you were lucky you lived somewhere with a robust local scene, or at the very least a record store that employed the kind of people who were in touch with more obscure artists. Living across the lake from Seattle at least gave me access to The Rocket and Cellophane Square, which stocked all the new Sub Pop releases. But was I aware of the scene happening in Minneapolis? No. And forget whatever was happening in Europe. That may as well have been in a different space-time continuum.
But today we have lots of ways to learn about music and artists – almost too many, really. Plus with Spotify and the internet on your phone, the vast majority of all recorded music is in your pocket at all times, just waiting for you to search for it. A lot of the new stuff I find is via social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram. And sometimes it comes to me from an oblique direction, like a Facebook post last month by Icelandic musician Futuregrapher. The picture showed a gent named Arnar Helgi Aðalsteinsson doing some restoration work on one of Futuregrapher’s synths. He also mentioned that Arnar had been part of an electronic duo called Plat that put out an album called Compulsions in the early 2000s. “One of the best Icelandic electronic album[s] ever in my books,” he wrote. Well now, that’s some pretty heady praise. And as soon as I read it I pulled up Discogs, found a copy of Compulsions for sale, and ordered it. Easy peasy. Even had I somehow heard of Compulsons when it came out 20 years ago, the chances of me actually finding a copy would have been very close to nil. But instead after a few clicks, it showed up in my mailbox a week later.
Compulsions is one of those albums I find almost impossible to write about. It has elements of ambient, but it’s a bit too busy and colorful to hang that tag on it. What about IDM? Kinda… though I don’t know that I’d be able to dance to it (to be fair, I’m an atrocious dancer), as the beats are a little glitchy. Experimental? A bit, sure; there are definitely some unique sounds and combinations (“Plat” is a great example). But whatever label you want to put on it, Compulsions has a certain feel to it, an internally consistent quirkiness, almost a free jazz spirit (check out “Kverkatak (Stranglehold)”) to how everything flows. I can see how this album could be influential – it’s the kind of thing that opens your ears and mind to possibilities you hadn’t considered before, and that’s always a positive.
The CD isn’t cheap, but fortunately Compulsions is available on Spotify. You can also listen to some of the tracks on Soundcloud HERE.