Rec.tangle – Heavy Maple

Rec.tangle is the project of Adrien Rodes, an Anglo-French solo artist, based in Brighton, and self described as “too autistic to form a band”. Seemingly all of the parts on this instrumental album, Heavy Maple, are played and composed solely by Rodes, and it certainly appears an impressive feat. The effort shines through with the rich instrumentation of the album as well as skill with which it has been put together. It is difficult not to feel impressed by the record, and to not feel charmed by it’s creator, despite knowing very little about him.Certainly, in part, Heavy Maple is a good album, placing itself as “unclassifiable”, it certainly doesn’t apply itself particularly well to any genre descriptions, and is difficult to describe. It is probably best described as peaceful, pleasant keyboard melodies drifting over an almost ambient backing. It rarely does anything to offend or displease the listener, but then rarely does anything to catch the attention of the listener. It seems, at times, like a soundtrack album - incremental and enjoyable enough when noticed, but is essentially happy to stay in the background, largely ignored. Brian Eno’s Music For Airports springs to mind, as a comparable listening experience, although Heavy Maple has more in the way in the way of substance to it than a simple ambient composition.Rodes is clearly talented, and Heavy Maple shows this. It is, at it’s best, supremely pleasant, and does include some enjoyable songs on it, which could hold the attention of the listener. 'Hedgehog Procession (at dawn)' is particularly enjoyable, but as whole the album largely fails to make an impact. It simply doesn’t have enough about it to be hold itself up under concentrated, undistracted listening. It is rather telling, for an instrumental album, that vocals could very easily be added, and would in truth improve the album greatly. If Rodes were to form a proper band, I would be very interested in his output, but simply put, Rec.tangle does not have enough about itself to attract the attention of the listener favourably. It remains simply, a very pleasant album, that is unfortunately constrained to the role of unnoticed, but not unwelcome, background noise. 58% Rec.tangle on Myspace