Rashad Becker makes a living with his ears. As engineer at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering, he’s mastered and cut a massive amount of dance, electronic, and experimental albums (his credits include at least 1200 records). He’s built a reputation for creating great-sounding vinyl, so it’s no shock that the first record of his own music sounds great, too. Traditional Music of Notational Species, Vol. 1 is thoroughly clear and precise. Everything on it is boldly legible, and though there are tons of sounds intersecting and overlapping, nothing is blurry. It’s as if Becker’s mastering his own brain and transferring what he hears in his head with little if any generational loss. It’s all pretty unpredictable, sure, but he’s always in control of his busy mix.
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What is surprising about Traditional Music is how singular it sounds. Becker has listened to so much music that it should be impossible for him not to copy some of it. And in fact there are moments that recall other artists (if you need a frame of reference, think Black Dice without the beats, or Fennesz with the serene poignancy replaced by an prankster-ish sense of play). But while you may have heard some of Becker’s sounds before, the way he glues, melts, cuts, layers, and stretches them is unique. So is the effect of all that activity– I rarely think of other music when I’m listening Traditional Music, since the connections and juxtapositions Becker makes between the sounds themselves are more than enough to occupy my attention.
Much of that attention-grab comes from how concrete Traditional Music sounds, a rarity for work this abstract. There are few sounds here that you’d automatically associate with particular notes, keys, or instruments. But every moment feels real in a tangible, three-dimensional way. Often music like Becker’s can seem dislocated from the material world, cut off from any physical events that might have created the sounds. But Becker’s mix lives and breathes in pointed, often hilarious detail. His sounds actually sound like things, be it growling animals, buzzing flies, distant echoes, whirring sirens, or blipping radars.
It’s up to you to choose which associations work, which makes Traditional Music a kind of sonic mood ring. Think of one track as underwater rumblings and suddenly you can hear bubbles popping, waves rolling, and depth-charges rippling; think of another as a conversation and soon every sound takes on the inflections and innuendoes of human speech. Smartly, Becker refrains from suggesting interpretations, titling half of his tracks “Dances I-IV” and the other half “Themes I-IV”. He seems so thrilled with all the possibilities in sound creation that he’s happy to let you divine the meaning in his madness. The only thing he seems to want you to do is have fun figuring it all out.
Given Becker’s background as an engineer, it’s tempting to see Traditional Music as a kind of sound-effect library or technical demonstration disc, and maybe it is. But if so, it’s similar to Raymond Scott’s early electronic experiments, which were lab exercises that produced engaging music. Scott tinkered with technology and pushed at the boundaries of the medium, but he was out to do more than wow laymen with his toys. His musical sensibility and thrill of discovery birthed pieces that were compelling and often even moving, regardless of how they were created. The same goes for Becker’s music. You can start by gawking at his surprising, hilarious, exhilarating sounds, but you’ll likely find many more reasons to return to Traditional Music of Notational Species, Vol 1.