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Dan Sobo: At the Tone the Time Will Be
If there's a lesson to be learned from the Great Electronica Hype of a few years back, it isn't that block rockin' boom-bap is the future of music, that guitars are deader than harpsichords, or that vocals are a crime against humanity. Granted, these things may all be true, but what most thinking, listening musicians from Radiohead to Tortoise have come away with is this: computers are a tool, and a damn powerful one—to stretch song-form, to make things sound exactly the way you want them to, and to do it all yourself.
Dan Sobo, SM '03, has taken those lessons to heart on his solo album, At the Tone the Time Will Be, the first release on his own Son of Freud Records. At the Tone is Sobo's "computer-music album," which means, in practice, a patchwork of beeps and pure tones sometimes sprayed and shimmered, the occasional heavily-treated sample, and a few buzzing, spacey FX, all drawn together and driven forward by Sobo's simple, assured guitar.
It's a distinctive sound, even in comparison to the most recent manifestations of guitar-meets-electronics; it aims for neither the laidback groove of trip-hop's more organic side, nor the loop-upon-loop spirals of German post-rockers. Sobo's approach most resembles the Beta Band's—both cut-and-paste-and-cut their sounds, hoping for resolution at a distance and surprise from up-close. But Sobo's material lacks the group's throw-everything-in freakout: he collages from simpler materials, and uses fewer of them.
In this case, less is usually less—while there are a few good moments ("I Know You"'s wind-up music box) and a few bad ones (the near-arena rock guitar part on "Pas Grympt"), too often there's no moment at all, and At the Tone fades into the background. Except for one attacking, contorted synth line halfway through, Sobo seems uncomfortable using his electronics to say anything substantial; most sounds leave no trace after they've faded from the mix.
Rather than the computer itself, then, the most enduring part of At the Tone is Sobo's guitar, whether solo, computer-processed, or—most interestingly—playing with another computer-processed version of itself. Sobo doesn't make great computer music with his computer. However, the guitar music Sobo makes with it shows that he knows a thing or two about this modern world of ours. (Son of Freud)
—Sam Frank
All materials © 2000 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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