Build Buildings: There Is a Problem with My Tape Recorder
Build Buildings
There's somewhat of a wallflower quality to Build Buildings' There Is a Problem with My Tape Recorder, with Brooklyn-based musician, scientist, and philologist Ben Tweel purposefully excluding bold crescendos and diminuendos from his twelve acoustic-electronic songs. Consequently, the reserved dynamic range of the album's pretty micro-minimal material (which at times resembles a 12k/Line and Morr Music cross) makes it easy to overlook the craft of Tweel's third album which was assembled meticulously from household sounds, self-designed drum patches, and random noise. While traces of other artists' styles are audible (Oval in “Notices,” Colleen in the meditative “Test Me,” and Alva Noto in “27 Cents”), Tweel as often as not stakes out a personal ground (“Pendulum,” for example, distinguished by its churning, bass-heavy rhythms of static textures, and the sunny “Dibs” with its layers of glistening guitar strums). In the final analysis, though There Is a Problem with My Tape Recorder's understated approach definitely has its appeal, the album's restrained style induces more admiration than excitement.
July 2005
