AB017 - Middlemarch - He Can Jog

Cat: AB017 Time: June 08 Media: CD & Digital Download Info: Featuring a buzz of rarefied audio excitement, engaging melodies and detailed beats Middlemarch radiates with charm and beauty. Microsite: middlemarchengland

Tracklisting: 1. Suite Part Four 2. Dials 3. Suite Part Three 4. My (Mother's) Records 5. Agnes (After Woodland Pattern) 6. Pan-Fried Fern 7. A Small Thing 8. Contractors and Architects 9. Suite Parts One and Two

Who are you?
 Erik Schoster.

 Why do you write music?
 I try not to think about that too much. If I really got into it I 
 might dig out some mortality fears and embarrassing 
 ego motivations. One thing I've known for a long time 
 though is that sound makes sense to me, and it's 
 immensely rewarding to shuffle it around in some 
 pleasant way, and challenge my ear as much as I can 
 in that process. As much as they are aesthetic interests 
 music and sound are social and cultural interests to me 
 as well. The ritual purposes they serve (even in our 
 modern, toaster- oven world!) are fascinating and vital, 
 and are my favorite entry points to cultures and 
 communities. So to answer the question: I have no idea 
 why.

 How would you describe your music?
 My music is probably the dilettante or autodidact that the
 other refined and popular musics turn their noses up at 
 and take pity on for its mawkish naivety. It is all of my 
 life and the people I've met, the things I've heard, and 
 my total lack of understanding, stirred into what I hope 
 is a digestible sonic porridge.

 What does this album mean to you?
 This album is as much a culmination of a decade of my 
 life and the intersections I've made along the way as it 
 is a collection of songs and sounds. For me it's very 
 much a comfortable audio document of most of the last 
 decade. It feels like picking up a scrapbook to go back 
 and listen to it, and that's usually the context I return to 
 it in. When someone other than me listens, it also 
 becomes the living potential for an unknowable set of 
 new memories and associations, which is incredibly 
 humbling and exciting to me.

 Can you elaborate on some of your creative 
 processes?
 Meticulously planned accidents and failures are my 
 specialties. I tend to develop elaborate plans that 
 explode  spectacularly in my face when I attempt to 
 carry them out. The fun part is taking the leftover 
 detritus and molding it into something workable. That 
 process of transformation can be incredibly frustrating 
 and kill a project before it has a chance to breathe, but 
 in some cases I can end up with something I couldn't
 have otherwise planned or imagined. The other answer
 is that I use Logic and Max/MSP and Reason on my 
 Macbook to manipulate recordings I make of myself or 
 friends. I'm playing more instruments these days too, 
 which feels good: trombone, celeste, lap steel, violin, 
 harmonica, hand bells, and other found objects are the 
 instruments I can barely play.

 What are your future plans?
 I plan to stay in New York for the foreseeable future 
 and hopefully tour more as He Can Jog and with my 
 band Cedar AV. If I plan my life more than that, it may 
 explode in my face as well. ;-)

XLR8R WEEKLY TOP 10 The cover of this disc–a girl clad in white standing in a bleak, wintery woodland–hints at the contents of this release, the latest from Midwest-born producer Erik Schoster. Combining dreamy pop music with experimental electronics (not to mention an arsenal of bells, harps, acoustic guitars, laptop-processed bleeps, and static), he has created an album that would please both laptop scientists and kids wanting something pretty to listen to while driving a car. And yes, the album is named after the George Eliot novel. http://www.xlr8r.com/news/2008/05/top-10-health-daedelus-audion

THE SILENT BALLET I was never familiar with He Can Jog - in fact, I had never even heard of the Brooklyn based experimental techno jockey until I took on MiddleMarch. Dear lord, was I missing out.

MiddleMarch is a glorious mishmash of kinky synths and danceable beats, endlessly hooking the listener into toe-tapping, mind-boggling, ear-blasting euphoria. A laptop musician extraordinaire, He Can Jog's music has the production quality of a full blown studio release from Warp, without losing the home-made, DIY character that amateur computer musicians round the world strive for. His cuts are progressive without losing the edge and focus of rhythm and structure that keeps a listener wanting more. MiddleMarch owes a lot to acts like Proem and The Flashbulb, who moved techno and IDM away from the Audiovisual Club mentality of gear-over-substance and focused on making the music fun, catchy, and real.
That sense of reality is what will keep me listening to He Can Jog for many, many months. The powerful, staggering presence of warmth and texture in MiddleMarch is beautifully jarring compared to last year. 2007 was a year of cold, heartless electronica. 2008 is proving completely different, delivering sensible electronic acts with a slew of raw, personal offerings. The four part suite series on MiddleMarch is reason alone to call He Can Jog the next Benn Jordann or Aaron Funk. I know comparing an unestablished bedroom producer to these gods of the modern electronic realm might seem a tad drastic, but there is no doubt in my mind that He Can Jog will aspire to meet and even exceed the achievements of these artists, and in no time will prove himself as a force to be reckoned with in the coming years.
I do hate drawing such blatant comparisons when He Can Jog's sound is incredibly original, but I will say that the excitement and enthusiasm brought to the table on MiddleMarch reminds me of Arctic Hospital, my favorite new star in the electronic world, though He Can Jog is not a distant second by any means. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the place to find tomorrow's stars is Audiobulb Records. The label knows exactly what makes the digital music world tick. Well done, He Can Jog. Well done.

Jack Britton

EAR LABS RATED: 9.5 / 10 reviewed by Larry Johnson

He Can Jog is sound sculptor (and co-director of the Luvsound netlabel) Erik Schoster from Madison, Wisconsin. If you visit his website you’ll notice that it’s interestingly subtitled “homebrewed Midwestern electronic nonsense” with the word “nonsense” being used (at least to my way of thinking) in the context of “fun noise.” Some four years in the making, Middlemarch is Erik’s debut release on Audiobulb and provides yet another instance of the label’s commitment to releasing exceptional exploratory electronic music. Even though He Can Jog is an anagram of John Cage, Erik’s compositions are no where close to being Cageian-like. The music on Middlemarch (named after the classic George Elliot novel) is a heartfelt, entertaining, and perplexing flurry of sonic excitement consisting of warm melodies, lively broken-beats, occasional vocals, and flickering tones inspired by the intersections of intimate collections of memories. It's a whimsical blend of folk-pop influences, IDM flavorings, and hazy ambient textures. Erik's method of composing makes use of software programming, acoustic instrument samples, electronic production, and improvisation via the manipulation of sounds using custom-built patches. I have to admit that Middlemarch is not the usual kind of experimental electronic music that I listen to or review. After receiving the promo copy and hearing it or the first time, I had pretty much decided that it was not something that I could write about. However, I’ve learned that first impressions are quite often deceiving and found that to be the case here. Repeated listening and a thorough reading of the notes that accompanied the disc revealed an underlying richness in compositional style/content and emotional intensity that one casual listening just doesn’t reveal. So here's an album of serious, skillfully composed experimental electronic music that's able to bring a smile to my face by simply being exciting, entertaining, uplifting, and just plain fun to listen to? While some listeners might at least initially be put off by the quirky blend of folk, pop, IDM, and ambient elements that went into the making of the nine eclectic works comprising Middlemarch, a little more unbiased and considerate listening will reveal the same compositional vitality and emotional depth that I came to realize. Middlemarch is an important release for Erik personally being as it is a kind of sonic memoir detailing a few years of his life, and he "counts the whole record as a catalogue of these memories of people and places and his own process of becoming." http://www.earlabs.org

BOOMKAT A fine example of modern electronica, He Can Jog's Middlemarch is a boldly diverse set of compositions, tackling dronescapes, digital glitch textures and even vocal electronic pop to a consistently high standard. At He Can Jog's creative epicentre is Erik Schoster, who combines the offline conventions of electronic composition with real-time improvisation via customised MAX patches. This combination of different disciplines results in the raw bitstream ambience of 'Agnes (After Woodland Pattern)' or 'A Small Thing' whilst also bringing forth the melodic, beat-driven sounds of 'Suite Part Three'. There's an adventurously unpolished feel to all this that suggests an abandonment of presets or software clichés, freeing up Schoster to switch things around on wildly divergent consecutive tracks like 'Contractors And Architects', with its borderline Postal Service-isms and 'Suite Parts One And Two', which approaches Keith Fullerton Whitman levels of sublime electroacoustic drone. Highly recommended. http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=121250

THE MILKFACTORY The strangely named He Can Jog is one of the many projects of Brooklyn-based sound artist Erik Schoster who focuses primarily on textural sound explorations. Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, Schoster spent his formative years studying composition and improvisations. In the last four years, he has released a handful of MP3 EPs and his work has also been featured on a few compilations, including on no less than four from Sheffield’s excellent Audiobulb, which have been nurturing his talent for some time. It is therefore only fair that they got to release Middlemarch, the follow up to his debut album, New Ground Has Not Broken, Soil Last Week And Dirt Today, released in 2004. Right from the onset of Suite Part Four, which opens, Schoster establishes an elegant laptopestry made of interferences, glitches and statics upon which he builds subtle little melodic pieces which often develop into gentle layered miniature symphonies, usually contained within three-to-five minute compositions. The album seems articulated around the four Suites, beginning, as mentioned above with Part Four, Suite Part Three following a couple of tracks in and the epic Suite Parts One And Two, which closes the album. The remaining compositions stand very well on their own however, whether it is the short interludes Dials, with its minimal drone-like setting, or A Small Thing, with its bubbling statics and embryo of melody which originally fails to develop, but finally comes to life on Contractors And Architects, the only vocal track on the album, or with more fully formed tracks. Surprisingly upbeat and clearly defined against the rest of the album, the refined Suite Part Three is in part reminiscent of Four Tet circa Pause, but this is in no way a criticism as Schoster does this kind of things rather well. My (Mother’s) Records, which follows, combines processed acoustic guitars, found sounds and sliced vocal samples into a much tightly woven ball of sounds. The album then veers toward slightly darker and colder grounds with Agnes (After Woodland Pattern) and Pan-Fried Fern, which, although remaining sonically close to the rest of the album, appear to echo the foggy atmosphere of the cover photograph, which shows a young girl, bare feet, walking in a wintry woodland. The piece de resistance of Middlemarch comes with concluding piece Suite Parts One And Two, which develops over twelve and a half minutes and two distinct sections, the first one appearing like a stripped down version of the second, where Schoster deploys the richest soundscapes and melodies of the record. With Middlemarch, He Can Jog’s Erik Schoster has created a rather beautiful and intimate record which delights and charms all the way through, thanks to carefully crafted sound formations and melodies which continuously grow and develop. Middlemarch is one of these records that procure continuous listening pleasure by somehow giving the impression of never sounding quite the same twice. 4/5 http://www.themilkfactory.co.uk

WHITELINE He Can Jog – a nifty little anagram of John Cage, perhaps takes some of its influence from the Great Man in terms of innovative solutions and skewed approaches. This is a charming, engaging little piece that invites instant comparisons to Brit minimalist composers, The Boats, or Mole Harness. U.S based Erik Schoster is the personality behind He Can Jog, and on Middlemarch, we see him inviting a cluster of musicians to augment and filter through his works. Most prominent are the cut and paste-type pieces that use fractured harmonies, and layered beats and blips. There are a variety of solutions on display here, that echo a truly post modern canvas, covering everything from the dripping melancholia of “Agnes (after woodland pattern)”, with its soothing harmonics and lilting loops, to the itchy minimalism of “Pan – Fried Fern”.” “Contractors and Architects” is essentially a mini pop melody, infused with vocals from Nick Sanborn, and has an infectious, bubbly refrain, with little of the rest of the album’s cut and slice approach. Throughout the collection, there are various surreal interruptions and interventions, oddly placed narratives, and words appearing as if from nowhere, that locate themselves outside of the pieces, yet somehow cohere with it at the same time. Non-linearity is the order of the day, with each narrative being spliced and grafted onto other elements in an unsettling, but highly engaging assemblage. To use the word “collage” would perhaps be a little trite, but this is indeed a fresh and expertly crafted CD that takes digital composition to some kind of logical extreme. If this is the future of modern composition, then count me in, and once again, Audiobulb asserts itself as a highly intelligent, innovative promoter of the digital (and post –digital) aesthetic. BGN http://whiteline1.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/he-can-jog-middlemarch-cd-audiobulb/

TEXTURA A generally inviting exercise in warm electronic melodicism, MiddleMarch by He Can Jog (yes, the title purposefully references George Eliot's novel and the alias adopted by laptop knob-twiddler and one-time trombonist Erik Schoster is an anagram of John Cage) inverts the usual template by spreading beats more freely over songs anchored by emotive keyboard melodies—but that's just one of the oblique strategies Schoster brings to the table. Accompanied by a handful of guests (who contribute Rhodes, Vibes and guitar samples, field recordings, and vocals), Schoster works a community theme into the album (hence the title choice) as it documents not only the evolution in his working methods—sampling, software programming, and electronic synthesis all figure in—over a four-year span, but also his interpersonal experiences during that time. Some pieces are experimental and explorative in character: a collage-like scattering of elements constitutes “My (Mother's) Records” (not entirely successfully either, as dropping the line “The songs we're now hearing are ancient tunes” into its middle seems a little too cute), and deeply textured masses of flickering starbursts flow through “Agnes (After Woodland Pattern),” “Pan-Fried Fern,” and “A Small Thing.” More immediately appealing is the material that gravitates towards sparkling electronic pop: “Contractors and Architects,” composed and sung by Nick Sanborn, could pass for a sample track by Morr Music's latest signing, while the keyboard melodies in “Suite Part Three” could single-handedly lull the crankiest infant to sleep. Both tendencies coalesce in the twelve-minute meditation “Suites Part One and Two” whose becalmed arrangement of glistening bells and tonal shimmer closes the album strongly. http://www.textura.org

NEURAL IT With the anagrammatized moniker 'He Can Jog', sound artist Erik Schoster pays tribute to John Cage, master and seminal experimenter. Cage remains an essential point of reference, especially for those who still wonder about the complex compositional structures in contemporary music. It's not by chance, then, that in 'Middlemarch' the attention seems focused on texture, gently twisted by glitches, interferences and clicks, creating a dreamy atmosphere, never trivial, but sensitive and delicate. It is high quality laptop music, with some "pop" taste and nuanced electronica that combines well with Bryan Teoh images [equally rarefied and multifaceted] during live performances. The record was composed using Max/MSP. The tracks present different attitudes in a painstaking and intricate way, without ever "punishing" the listener. It's minimalism and melody colliding in floating sonorities, a little melancholic, mixed with ambient and folk.
Aurelio Cianciotta http://www.neural.it/

THE WIRE (293) He Can Jog is an anagram of John Cage, but thankfully that's as groanworthy as Madison, Winsconsin's Erik Schoster's solo album gets. The album takes its title from the George Eliot novel because it is about how one develops as a person through interaction with a particular community. Schoster draws on his own memories of friends and acquaintances in Winsconsin and Milwaukee, where he also spends some of his time. Despite its irregular rhythmic intervals and heavy, thorough treatments, using, for example, custom programmed Max patches and sampled acoustic instruments, the overall effect of Middlemarch is benign. This is fine, because what the album is really about is memories and memory associations - the way recollections of people and places are filtered, preserved, distorted and cherished. The music reflects that in the stresses, overdubs and processes it has undergone, most sublimely on "Agnes (After Woodland Patern)". http://www.thewire.co.uk

CYCLIC DEFROST He Can Jog hinges upon the notion that one needs others in order to think for oneself - that the enrichment of thought depends on encounters with others and their involvements in life. Ergo the albums content, which revolves around the distortion, confusion, and invention brought about by others, but also its form: a tightly-knit community of prickly guitars, trills of synths, percolating electronics and seesawing fuzz.

Above all, though, the music breathes; vocals run up against and are cut-up into pointillist beats, rebounding percussive loops mesh with swarms of high pitches, and keyboard lines spring up from their reverie to provide arpeggiated counterpoint to warm, wooden knocking and nagging, choppy cascades of electronics. There’s something of a taste for dramatic assemblage, too, with Erik Schoster often forming clean, glistening melodies like oysters forming around grit. “Suite Part Four”, for one, creates a maze of ethereal harmonics, in which a warm, near-celebratory bell pattern circles around itself as though in a daze, before the whole thing is broken open by a propulsive plastic rhythm.

Schoster often switches between styles with some skill, but occasionally their combination proves problematic, as there’s a certain tentativeness in the music that is probably the result of the attempt to find commonalities in the musics various participants. The odd piece, such as “My (Mothers) Records”, thus sounds like a less than favorable compromise. Among others, though, the twelve minute closer, “Suite Parts One and Two”, reasserts the strong suites of this digital etherealism - its tolling bells and a computerized firestorm hover over and rain down on a churning drone, evoking the massive presence of an environment awaking from hibernation.

VITAL WEEKLY He Can Jog is an anagram of John Cage. It's the name chosen by Erik Schoster from Madison, Wisconsin. He studied composition and improvisation and plays with Cedar AV. His music is entirely made on the computer, and if you know what this label released before then you may already have an idea what he Can Jog is about. Bouncy beats, here even more than elsewhere, samples of guitars, voices, a bit of ambient. If I honest I say that I was reading this mornings newspaper when I put this on and I thought it was quite alright background music, but when I started writing, replaying, and listening more carefully, I thought it was a bit less than what I first anticipated. It sounds all a bit worn out. The Oval approaches, the Fennesz bendings, the IDM broken beats, the funny weirdness. Maybe I am getting too old for this line of musical business, but however nice this is, it just didn't do too much for me. (FdW)
http://www.vitalweekly.net/