A Taut Line - Never Any Gain (Diskotopia)

 

Title: Never Any Gain

Artist: A Taut Line

Label: Diskotopia

Cat Number: DSK065

Genre: Ambient House

1: Colour Science feat. Chocola B

2: Never Any Gain

3: Silver Lake

4: Neutral Buoyancy

5: Carmine

6: The Limits & The Lows

7: The following Contained feat. Chocola B

8: Kelsey Kerridge

9: Cameraphone

10: Chakka feat. Chocola B

‘Never Any Gain’ is the 5^th studio album by Matt Lyne, aka A Taut Line. He’s an artist that I’had been unfamiliar with up until very recently when I came across one of his tracks on a various artists release on Diskotopia, the label he co-founded and operates out of Japan, were he has lived for nearly two decades. Originally from Bristol, it’s almost certain that his place of birth and his current home play a large part in fusing his musical direction. However, whatever that is isn’t easy to pin down, and this collection is varied to say the least. Shrouded in what feels like a cross -pollination of synthetic shoe gaze and muggy beats at the beginning, an affinity with the Bristol sound of the late 80s to early 90s could be said to exist, this is particularly evident on ‘Silver Lake’, which then gives way to the faster, more linear ‘Neutral Buoyancy’. Both preceding tracks, the beatless and obviously more zen ‘Colour Science’ and the break beat proselytising ‘Never Any Gain’ are equally contrasting in both their use of vocals and instrumentation. ‘Carmine’ surfaces from the depths of vague sound design and then along with ‘The Limits And The Lows’ descends back into the halcyonic mist that envelopes this collection. ‘Kelsey Kerridge’ is a break beat/stripped back drum and bass piece which gives way to ‘Cameraphone’, perhaps the most abstract track on the album, along with the opener. And the two other tracks featuring the vocal contributions of Chocola B inhabit two different levels of the jazz spectrum, with ‘Chakka’ evoking the soundtrack to a reimagined film from the golden age of the nouvelle vague. A superbly put together album that is much greater than the sum of its parts, this is some piece of work.