Together Is The New Alone (2021 Remaster)

〈MILLE PLATEAUX〉黄金期にリリースされ、IDMとアンビエント・ミュージックの歴史の中で絶対的なマイルストーンとなったアイルランド・ダブリンのアーティスト DONNACHA COSTELLOによる'01年名作LPが、20周年を記念してリマスター&リイシュー!

テクノカルチャー、グリッチの美学、複雑なIDMのリズム、そして豊かなアンビエント・テクスチャーなどの要素を用いて、公式や慣習に固執することなく個々のパーツから複雑な構成を成す、今なお先進的なエレクトロ・アルバム。
アートワークを一新したこのレコード盤は、もともとCD版にしか収録されていなかった全10曲を、'15年に STEPHAN MATHIEUがリマスタリングし、コステロが自費出版した「Together」名義のデジタル再販版で発表した編集済みの最終形態で収録。タイトルで表現されている社会的疎外感や孤立感の逆説的な感覚を無言で語っているアルバムであり、リリース当時よりもCovid下の今日の感覚により近しく感じられる。時代を超え、深く心に響くと同時に、無限に豊かで驚くほど洗練された不朽のステートメント! 500枚限定盤。

Donnacha Costello doesn't try anything overly complex or ambitious on Together Is the New Alone, his first album for Mille Plateaux. Rather, he keeps his music simple and sparse, emphasizing lingering ambience. What lingers isn't so much the ten ambient pieces themselves though, but more so their respective, slowly modulating glistening melodies. Yes, it's quite simple, appealing to the senses rather than the intellect. In fact, it's not that far of a stretch from what Brian Eno proposed in his landmark Music for Airports album over 20 years earlier, an obvious touchstone for Costello. But it's perhaps better not to focus on how accessible these hypnotic songs are with their undeniable melodies -- soothing melodies that seem looped to infinity, looped until you can't escape them. Instead, it's more interesting to note Costello's transition here toward rather straightforward ambient music in comparison to his beat-driven Growing Up in Public album on Force Inc from a year earlier. There Costello didn't try to stumble listeners with overly complex, challenging arrangements either. However, on that sullen minimal techno album the emphasis was rhythm rather than melody. These differing approaches make Together Is the New Alone a perfect companion to Growing Up in Public. On both Costello proves himself to be a master craftsman in terms of creating elegant sounds and then arranging these sounds into repetative loops that he modulates undetectably. Whether you prefer a sense of rhythm or melody is somewhat trivial. Either way, Costello succeeds brilliantly, offering music that is both peripheral and captivating at the same time, music without poigiancy yet charged with texture. Together Is the New Alone is undoubtedly the more intimate and emotional of the two, given its emphasis on ambience and melody. ~ Jason Birchmeier