I/O\I s/t
I/O\I or “eyeoeye” is the project of musician Stafford Davis, one I’d describe as “everything and the kitchen sink.” What I mean by that is this is basically not only multi-genre, but everything goes, a real open and intimate viewpoint into the life of a composer whose influences seem to be between the two poles of singer/songwriter and ardent pop experimentalist.
As with most one-musician, independent projects that cover so much territory, there’s bound to be quite a bit of variance in quality and the production itself is fairly lo-fi. While I found the latter to be distracting at times, it’s actually not quite as discordant for the sort of Residents-like vibe going on here (track 9, “Product” is one notable example), just lacking in clarity at times. The major issue, as it always is for anything that covers this much territory and is so personal, is it’s difficult to imagine the audience that’s going to like it all. A while back I reviewed a CD by a totally different band, called Sebkha-Chott, who while having a much better production, had the same issue - the attempt to bring coherence from genre hopping. While Davis doesn’t attempt that sort of Mr. Bungle-like pastiche, there’s such a variety going on here that it’s kind of difficult to break any song down in terms of what its trying to do with its own rules. Of course based on the press sheet, I can imagine Mr. Davis doesn’t care too much for rules, as an experimentalist shouldn’t, but it only gives us independence as a context through 26 tracks all of which move through a number of instruments, timbres and styles.
Davis seems to split time between keyboard and guitar-based songs. On both accounts there seems to be a strong ambient Brian Eno influence, whether the echoing piano patches or guitar textures, although in some more conventional cases it’s missing from the guitar entirely. In fact these sorts of treatments probably go some way to explaining my difficulty with the production, some of these aspects wash out quite a bit. When the music takes a turn into more obviously song-inspired territory, such as on track 11, Where Weeds Grow, the production is at its most thin, but at least in these parts they almost give the music an old school, rough and tumble sort of feel. On the other hand such a muted sonic range works well with the Eno-inspired electronics experiments that pop up occasionally.
So overall, a little Eno, a little Residents, some almost Roger Waters-like intimacy when the music gets very songy, but overall definitely the vision of one rather iconoclastic musician, who’s not only brave enough to release something so uncompromising, but to allow negative opinions of such to be part of his press sheet. I’m not sure what sort of audience an album like this has (I’m not naturally inclined to art-pop all that much), combining weird avant garde sonics with natural songwriting, but fans of the abovementioned artists might want to take a quick peak.
[Mike now returns to his summer vacation]