ByteNoise

Melodies From Mars

Despite its apparent simplicity, in some ways Melodies From Mars shows how James has refined his compositional skills since his previous work. Instead of using polyphonic pads to play block chords, as with Pulsewidth, Ageispolis, Heliospan, and On the Romance Tip, Melodies From Mars sees him layering up several channels of monophonic melodies that often talk to, play off of, and echo each other, as with the Fingerbib work-in-progress (and indeed the finished version), track 4 and track 10. Even track 7, which features what is essentially an arpeggio for the backing melody, sounds very pretty for it, and is arguably a melodic improvement on many of his previous works, even if it's not as polished in terms of patch creation and overall production.

In his later Analord series, he often uses this technique of layering up complementary monophonic melodies, either out of necessity due to his use of antiquated equipment or due to his love of acidlines. Here, however, the timbres are simple, and for once take a back seat to the actual melodies, as the album's title suggests.

Melodies From Mars also sees James start to work on the progression of his arrangements. Whereas many of his previous works consist of single repeating sections, with various instruments fading in and out but only assigned a single pattern, usually about four bars long, this release sees him experiment more with alternating between two sections of the arrangement, in a verse/chorus style. In this respect, along with the sheer catchiness of some of the melodic hooks, this album contains possibly his most accessible and mainstream compositions, although it's easy to overlook this due to the simplistic instrumentation and amateur performances. It seems somehow typical of his ethos for him to keep such potentially popular music almost to himself and to leave it unpolished and half finished, while taking the time to perfect his more challenging works. It's as if he wants to prove that he can write catchy tunes without tainting his reputation for not actually officially releasing them.

Possibly the best use of an alternating verse/chorus style structure is track seven. A single repeating note offers a brief break from the first section for a short while, before leading straight back to it. The second time this repeating note appears, however, it's finally joined by the rest of the second section, revealing it as belonging to that section. This method of subtly introducing part of the second section works well. In addition to teasing the listener early on in the track, the repeating note's earlier appearance also serves to make the change to the second section seem less drastic, and more comfortingly familiar. Learning to seamlessly transition between sections in an arrangement certainly paid off for the composer, and such verse/chorus style arrangements are used throughout the subsequent Richard D. James Album.

Although the timbres are simple, and often consist of merely periodic waveforms without any variation, they're still far from familiar to most people. The style of playing — very little, if anything, is quantised here — combined with the choice of instrumentation gives the impression of someone with a childish naïveté and a pure love of his craft. I'm not sure how much this is by design (as the album title would seem to insinuate), and how much might be because the tracks were unfinished at the time of the recording (two of them went on to be included in the Richard D. James Album, in more refined forms). It's arguable that the timbres are often a bit too simplistic (Ageispolis's pure square wave returns in abundance on the seventh and tenth tracks), on the verge of causing listening fatigue, and the performances are a bit too loose and amateur (occasionally the odd quarter of a bar or so even seems to be entirely skipped over by mistake). However, this childish playfulness makes this one of the most fun albums I've heard, genuinely making me laugh at times. It's certainly an acquired taste, but you come away feeling that maybe there should be more artists trying to make such obstensibly naïve and happy music.

Like pretty much all his work, Melodies From Mars is testamount to James's love of quirky experimentation, and wandering off on any direction except for one well trodden.

The more complex percussion and rich (perhaps due to pulse-width modulation) main synth timbre in track eleven hint at what was to come later with, for instance, Arched Maid Via RDJ. The album in general paves the way towards both Hangable Auto Bulb and the Richard D. James Album. Although it was never officially released and as such can't be used to make judgements about the artist's abilities nor intentions, for aspiring musicians it helps to show that his ideas didn't come to him suddenly one day out of thin air, but were rather the result of much hard work and refinement of previous ideas, with a slow, steady progression, which is an encouraging thought for anyone hoping to also carve his or her own niche in the musical world.