DJ TRAVIS @ echo

timexile

Tim Exile (né Tim Shaw) was made for the stage, but maybe not the stage you’d expect. Most of Exile’s affectations– billowy low tenor, showy buildups, rugged everyman looks, the glitzy stage name– all point towards showbiz. The result is that Shaw’s third album, and first for Warp, Listening Tree, sometimes sounds like Electronica: The Musical with Shaw playing the sashaying lead. It’s occasionally a bit hokey, but Listening Tree trades on Shaw’s genre-hopping to build aggressive, kinetic dramas.

Any of you crossover kids carrying your new Field record in a Smalltown Supersound tote and accustomed to your electronic music pattering on blissfully, beware: Listening Tree is an album where things properly happen– lyrically, sure, but also musically. Shaw takes many of his cues from non-linear boom-bappers like Aphex Twin or, if you’re looking for someone more theatrical and obscure, Plaid. His compositions spatter and pluck and tumble outwards, each indelicate sound unfurling from another. Listening Tree’s songs are so motion-oriented, in fact, that Shaw’s Scott-Walker-fronting-the-Human-League vocals often serve as the calming influence. – Pitchfork

With:
We Are The World
DJ Travis