KTRU Pick of the Week: The Breadwinner

By Miguel Quirch     3/26/09 7:00pm

Every week at KTRU, eager DJs scribble out short reviews of music's cutting-edge albums. KTRU's Music Department uses these reviews to judge the quality of the albums it receives and to provide information for the DJs who play them. Each week, a DJ polishes one of these reviews so that KTRU's riches can shine for the larger Rice community.Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet are two creative forces that have been working together to create something amazing, but in order describe the phantasmagoric depictions created by The Breadwinner, one has to first understand its roots.

Lambkin hails from the band The Shadow Ring, known for its blend of noise, folk and distortions, plus peppering of poetry. Lescalleet originated as a reel-to-reel tape manipulator with a penchant for the emotionally deep and unsettling. Prior to working with Lambkin, Lescalleet released the eerie rollercoaster The Pilgrim, recorded as a tribute to his dying father. Highlights of that album include recordings that were taken at the hospital his father was in, displaying raw and powerful - almost overwhelming at times - emotion.

The first instance of the two bumping together was the excellent album Salmon Run, which was in and of itself quite interesting. This second instance of the two combining is not only far superior, but is also far more unique.

---

---

The Breadwinner is mostly a collection of mundane recordings taken around Lambkin's home. The pair basically wandered around the area and recorded the sounds of various "domestic" happenings. Snoring, creaking, stirring, raining and a toilet flushing are all among the simple sounds of normal life that form the groundwork of the album. From there, the seemingly mundane sounds are distorted, stretched and transmogrified into something altogether fascinating and odd. The fact that the chaos contained on the disc originates from such simple and familiar origins is quite impressive.

The individual tracks on the album go from calm to chilling. The opening track of the album, "Listen, the snow is falling," is a great example of this, starting softly before swelling and taking on an almost sinister life of its own. Numerous recordings are mashed together to give the feeling of snow falling, building into an almost suffocating snowstorm.

Another delicious entry, and my personal highlight of the album, was "e5150/body transport." The track distorts more of the household sounds and creates a drone that bombards the senses for a time. It eventually grows to become an even eerier (if that's even possible) soundscape that includes snoring. "e5150/body transport," accompanied by the track title, makes me envision a creeping undersea nightmare growing ever clearer the closer one gets to the ocean floor.

It is great musicianship that is able to evoke such feelings, and the assorted collection compiled together on this album clearly show that the fusion of Lambkin's knack for abstract artistic ability and Lescalleet's charged environments is undeniably successful. The Breadwinner's awesome metamorphosis of mundane into magic is likely not for the faint of ears, but it certainly is able to attract those willing to feel sounds that speak much more than most might initially think.

---