Leigh Hegg: drums
Angus McCready: bass and synth
James Tucker: guitar
Danny Jumpertz: samples and sound processing
Influences
Reviews for The Undertone
4 stars. This debut longplayer from Australia’s Plankton is a beautifully mesmerising example of four creative musicians interacting. Sydney Morning Herald, 2004
4.5 stars. Plankton is the humblest of names, but fitting for this organic, submarine outfit from Melbourne. Cinematic, soundscapey, postrocky, and richly produced, there is a sense of otherworldliness in The Undertone that resonates with the idea of oceans and microbes. An incredibly graceful sweep from 'real' to electronic instruments (synths that are never synthetic, guitars that sound like whalesong) and an astoundingly layered production by in-house (um, that means in-band) Danny Jumpertz serves as a reminder of what is possible both musically and beneath the surface of all things. Importantly, it doesn't suffer from the lack of passion or inaccessibility that can characterise a lot of these kinds of clever-trouser bands. A very courageous and impressive debut. The Brag, November, 2003.
You can say it all you want -- Post Rock is dead -- but that won't make it true, especially when groups like Plankton are out there making engaging instrumental music. The Undertone doesn't blaze any new trends, but it offers well-played and interesting material.
Plankton has four members: in addition to producing the record, Danny Jumpertz plays electric guitar and does various synthetic and processing work, while Leigh Hegg plays drums, Angus McCready handles the bass and James Tucker plays guitar. The group's touchstones seem to include everyone from Tortoise to Isotope 217 to Tarentel, particularly resonant in the minimal patterns of the rhythm guitars and the slightly mathy polyrhythms often present in the percussive background. However, their reliance on interesting synthetic timbres and just a dash of their own peculiar brand of noise around the edges gives them a sonic wrinkle all their own.
A squall of electric guitar feedback gives "Hurricane Annie" an authentic aural analog to the stormy titular topic. Hegg's drums beat out a furious rhythm, crashing away like waves pounding a beachhead, while McCready lays down a sonorous line of bass counterpoint. The resultant wall of sound is powerful in both its imagery and its musical rhetoric.
"The Island of the Day Before" (a title taken from an Umberto Eco novel), on the other hand, is more about gradual melodic explorations by Jumpertz and Tucker. McCready switches to double bass here, bending notes and walking a slow drag. "Where the Sea Meets the Sky" is an extended piece that includes some spoken word samples of an Australian Broadcasting Company morning radio broadcast. The samples are subjected to a mechanizing effect, serving as articulate percussive punctuations.
"7 AM Start" begins with a pile of glissandi, almost the sounds of tuning up, which recedes as a midtempo drum riff enters. Tucker's solo continues with the bending and sliding once the piece's main section has begun, while Jumpertz adds a pad of synth tones in the background. Then, just like that, the piece fades quickly and is gone. On an album of longish instrumentals, these little morsels are extremely effective -- you'll wish for more of a particular segment rather than tiring of it before it's over.
In a piece that must in the running for "Best Title '04", "Sad Clone Battle" creates a slowly evolving landscape of considerable desolation. Plankton is excellent at these kind of gradually revealed formal designs, part Morton Feldman, part Daniel Lanois. The musical approach taken here would seem to live or die based on the quality of the arrangements. Happily, Jumperz and Plankton have an imaginative ear for instrumental color and a flair for pacing that'll make you wish some of The Undertone's eight minute pieces were eight minutes longer. Christian Carey, http://www.splendidezine.com
Hopefully a few sentences of text printed where the The Undertone itself lies catch your attention as you pull up around the edges of the disc, about to have a listen. Those sentences are a quote from Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan, from The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word.
“Every being with life comes to the surface and again returns whence it came, as each note has its return to the ocean of sound. The undertone of this existence is the loudest and the softest, the highest and the lowest; it overwhelms all instruments soft or loud, high or low tone, until all gradually merge in it; this undertone always is, and always will be.”
And so it is with this offering from the Australia-based quartet, Plankton. Know this: The Undertone is not a singles album. It is thirteen tracks of instrumental music, the only sparse vocals coming from samples. And while there is variety within and across the songs, so too is there unity. ‘The undertone of this existence’ somehow does permeate the album, meaning Plankton must be winning Khan fans from Australia to the United States.
There are jazz-influenced chords and drumming, but this is not jazz. And neither is it comparable to jam-band instrumentals, with all of their self-indulgent but generally uninspired noodling. And the level of musicianship keeps it out of the boundaries of atmospheric New Age. What this categorization and re-categorization leaves is an album by Plankton called The Undertone. What else can you call it? (And in the end, why bother?)
The tracks, generally relaxed in spirit with comfortably shifting chord patterns on keyboards and shimmering electric guitars, are propelled along with what becomes, on closer listening, surprisingly insistent drumming. Leigh Hegg is an inventive drummer whose patterns and accents are tasteful, even appropriately subdued, but he provides the majority of whatever tension – even life – across the album. Above and below him the other musicians bring in and remove patterns, often leaving the music seeming like the evolution of a species, gradually transforming a song over five minutes of seemingly repetitive sounds.
Fans of singing along with songs, though, or those with short attention spans, probably ought to start elsewhere. While what Plankton does, they do well, it just isn’t for everyone. There are no lyrics, no verses, no refrains – this is often subtle instrumental music that will fade into the background if you don’t actively engage it. But those who find extended soloing over a riff shifting between one measure of four and two of three interesting will thoroughly enjoy it. The Undertone is a deceptively complex, coherent, mature album. http://www.30music.com/
Plankton’s breezy, psychedelic-tinged post-rock would be perfect for your next mimosa party. Or maybe if you were trying to impress that really aloof German girl that works in accounts-receivable. Or maybe if you were just German. Yep, I bet Plankton’s new album The Undertone would nicely accommodate any of those scenarios. Sitting around in a turtleneck, expounding on Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, polishing your glass coffee table and ignoring your children, watching TiVo’d Masterpiece Theater (ironically), driving a luxury sedan in a car commercial while the hot German girl next to you does some fucked up version of the robot.
Reading this, you might think I’m some German-hating, cynical elitist or that The Undertone is some German-sounding elitist trance shit...neither of which is true. Plankton is a conglomerate of Aussie instrumentalists that know how to freak a crazy blip-blopping beat as well as break down a far-out, guitar-murdering psychedelic burnfest. And while the Floyd-ish freakouts are a bit too few and far between for my taste and the glitchy ambience a bit on the long side, Plankton still managed to make a day’s work a little less harsh and the fluorescent lights that hover above me a little less blinding. Clocking in at a little over an hour, The Undertone’s polyrhythmic patterns splash up against minimalist guitar and preprogrammed beats for a futuristic, grooved-out, afternoon-nap kind of feeling.
“Hurricane Annie” immediately sucks you into a world of shifting shapes and morphing expectations. I dub this “Best Music to Come Down off and Acid Trip to,” with its freak-nasty guitars and clock-ticking drum kit. Following that, the Umberto Eco-referencing “The Island of the Day Before” melds organic electronics and ambient instrumentation in a way that you can almost feel cool sand on your back and the individual drops of sweat carving paths down your face. The spontaneous-sounding arrangements of “Tsunami,” with whistling computer effects and angular guitar riffs, make you wish they grooved a little longer than a minute and a half.
But Plankton seems more inclined to toss out the eight to nine minute ambient tracks than expand on the truly excellent angular freakouts. I’d be more bummed, but I’m too relaxed. And I’m not even German. http://www.adequacy.net
The Undertone mixes electronics and live instrumentation into an intensly beautiful and at times unsettling collage. Lawrence English, Time Off
Plankton is a very mature approach to the use of tech . . . sort of like a more modern Necks. Tim Ritchie, Sound Quality, Radio National.
Recorded between Southbank, Arthurs Seat and Richmond over the course of two years local instrumental outfit Plankton’s debut album is surprisingly coherent. Drawing on elements of post rock, jazz and electronics, Plankton exist in a similar headspace to the likes of Little General or International Karate, though manage to separate themselves via a strange form of real time processing in which one member treats the instruments with strange effects as they are being played. In fact, below the bass guitar and drums, there are all manner of subtle and not so subtle sounds emanating, colliding and shuddering, creating a dense shifting tapestry of sounds. Whilst in the main the quartet keep things bubbling along nicely in that Mogwai/Tortoise influence post-rock vein, creating superbly nuanced evocative tunes, it’s only when they slow down and become more gentle, darker and moody that they really begin to distinguish themselves. In fact Distant Light feels like it could be peeled straight off the celluloid, a dark sparse beatless piece with gentle industrial drones and a claustrophobic feeling of stasis, whilst the closer Sad Clone Battle is a dark, violent and strange mix between eighties film mood music (ie: a wailing sax – think Angel Heart) and pounding repetitive beats that descend into heavily reverberated soundscape, which whilst initially seeming incongruous is a real highlight of an interesting and at times challenging album. Bob Baker Fish, Inpress
Another rather grand release from Sydney's Feral Media in recent months, Plankton are an interesting of instrumental post-rock melded with percussive jazz moments and ambient electronic dalliances. In some ways akin to the kind of work in Paul Kelly did in the Lantana soundtrack, the meandering twilight sounds of wondering mind driving late at night.
Such is Plankton's feel: organic percussion emulating the more synthetic vibrations of other post-rock bands, gentle reverbing guitar nuances permeating the light pulse of an ambient soundscape. Rather than follow the soft to loud crescendo of GYBE! or more stated presence of Mogwai, Plankton rest comfortably in the unstated: tracks like "Where The Sea Meets The Sky" follow in this vein. Conversely "Hurricane Annie" shows are louder dynamic true to it's namesake, the blues-driven guitar sliding around like a crazed storm, whilst the syncopated jazz drumming steadies the pace. The funk groove of "There Is More Than One Way" provides even more room for a diversified portfolio of sounds, whilst the abrupt and at times caustic sounds of "Sad Clone Battle" fade to black a wonderfully crafted and diverse album.
A well accomplished album that would draw to similarities to Prop's debut a few years back. You can tell that these fellas are damn fine musicians from the sheer technical brilliance of their music. "The Undertone" takes huge moon steps to redefine and reshape the definition of post-rock to encompass a larger musical lineage.
http://www.ozmusicproject.net/
Plankton formed during 2000 in regional NSW Australia (Lismore) and members now reside in Melbourne and Sydney. Plankton have released one full length album, THE UNDERTONE (2003) and a mini-album INSOMNIA (2005).
Plankton have gone fishing.
hello there* thanks for finding us! your space is cosy. be welcome to the alpine musicscape and sonic bewitchment. kitchen is your friend! lets stay connected... ktchn
