Label: Interscope Records

Release Date: June 17, 2003

Website: www.wovenmusic.com

Woven - 8 Bit Monk
Jeff Edwards

The website of the band Woven uses many of the words one would expect of avant-garde musicians. In fact, rather than a "band," their info page defines them as an "inter-disciplinary working experiment." There are plenty of high-minded pseudo-intellectual descriptions on the same page of what the songs supposedly are meant to convey. To the outside observer, this appears pretentious rather than artful in the context of how the album actually sounds. In a sense, the suggestion is that they are trying to position themselves as a more electronica-friendly version of Einstuerzende Neubauten. However, they are simply not strange enough to pull this off, and end up closer to a watered-down version of the Wax Trax label's catalog from the late eighties.

Indeed, what remains is a pleasant and reasonably diverse collection of songs dancing in the gulf between straight alt-rock and straight electronica, borrowing elements of each. The music is obviously very focused upon electronics – in terms of many of the beats and instrumentation – but traditional organic instruments often shine through as well. Songs structures are rather traditional, in contrast to what one might expect based on the band's own self-description.

Tracks vary from a layered approach with Middle-Eastern strains ("Pillage") to Violator-era Depeche Mode sounds ("My Conditioning") to the aforementioned Wax-Trax light ("I Want You Yesterday," "Bubble Wrap"). Downtempo moments are even more traditional than the rest, including "Soul Fossa," "Who Knows" and "Rooftops," and are also the least-memorable parts of the "experiment." Of particular note is the song "Astral Low" which does indeed vary experimentally in sound a bit more than the rest, with distorted yelling layered into the background.

Overall, Woven shows great competence in constructing songs from diverse elements, but then over-polishing the end result. This makes the album more accessible, but not particularly groundbreaking. Hopefully they will extend their reach in the future.

posted 10.11.03

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