dean roberts continuously manages to effectively skate the perimeter of bare electronic abstraction and traditional, albeit skeletal composition. the first seeds of formal compositional structure were only hinted at on 2000s and the black moths play the grand cinema, an album with the aspirations of glitch, post-rock flourishes, and germanic abstraction. while compelling in random bursts, its immediacy was perhaps too fleeting and soon petered out before albums end. roberts' 2003 release on kranky, be mine tonight, swelled with the architecture of improvisation, vetted through hush rhythmic tones and brooding staccato guitar lines to create lateral sound portraits through linear means. that album also ushered in roberts' most declarative statement after several records that mined a more minimalist abstract terrain. jealousy and diamond, under the band name of autistic daughters, picks up the thread of be mine tonight. it continues its characters' rich development from roberts' rarefied oeuvre and coalesces with intent and vitality only hinted at on be mine tonight.


autistic daughters is a trio comprised of roberts, werner dafeldecker, and brilliant, loose-limbed percussionist martin brandlmayr. one of the biggest assets on almost all of dean roberts' solo material is his choice of collaborators. roberts wisely surrounds himself with european musicians who are slightly removed from the prosaic confines of post-rock. subsequently, their influence infuses much of dean roberts' work with a stately classicist and expressionist free-form stature. the contributions of dafeldeker and brandlmayr not only make jealousy and diamond a more focussed effort than be mine tonight, but they also instil a confident and collaborative structure, that might explain this record..s demarcation under a band name rather than just another dean roberts solo release.


within the comparative context of familiar song structure, there is an ample amount of elasticity that permeates jealousy and diamond..s seven tracks. dafeldecker has lent his nimble fingers and nuanced pulses to the likes of polwechsel, christian fennesz, kevin drumm, and jim o'rourke, while brandlmayr's fluid strokes are the metronomic heartbeat that makes radian and trapist such an enticing ride. jealousy and diamond is all about reconciling structure and free-form strategies through an intimate ebb and flow that thrusts and parry's throughout the seven songs here. »the glasshouse and the gift-horse« sways sinuously with a rhythmic shift that alternates between a blues-y german cabaret guitar line and a propulsive train-like snare backbeat. roberts re-casts ray davies' »rainy day in june« as a david sylvian meets scott walker pastiche, complete with mesmerizing off-kilter percussion. and a whirling guitar line and looped drones introduce »spend it on the enemy« before martin brandlmayr's percussion erupts and roberts' intense vocal delivery bring the song to a cathartic denouement.


jealousy and diamond, like be mine tonight, sighs with the fragile damaged beauty reminiscent of the portraits of diane arbus. although there are cracks that are naked, subtle, and sometimes harrowing, the fissures reveal a potent and compelling compound of thought, reflection, and emotion. jealousy and diamond is a perfect late-night accompaniment to a contemplative or ruminative state of being.

lee jackson: foxydigitalis (foxydigitalis)


autistic daughters is dean roberts' new art pop trio, which builds on the fractured melodic splendor of his solo debut »be mine tonight« with vivid articulation. »jealousy and diamond« is in every way an improvement over that remarkable debut, with martin brandlmayr (drums, vibraphone and electronics) and werner dafeldecker (electric and contrabass) adding inspired counterpoints to roberts' expanding grasp of songwriting and guitar, almost always draped in a fine electro-acoustic haze here.

with each of these seven tracks the trio thrives for a hidden chord of subdued harmonic bliss and even occasional emotional catharsis, and autistic daughters aren't afraid to turn up the volume and tempo either. opener »a boxful of birds« builds from a stunningly controlled backdrop of shuffling snare patter and detached jazz harmonies before opening up in a soaring vocal climax, complete with handclaps. this is an album of investigation, where every facet of a chosen melodic path is reworked and expanded with shakers, harmonium, percussive smears and dashes, voice and other subtler electronic flourishes.

maybe it's not what you'd expect from a guy who got his start making detuned guitar noise, but it makes some sense if the same fellow slowly diverted his energies towards a more minimal pop trajectory. autistic daughters take a tried and true formula and inject it with just enough invention and vitality to arrive somewhere new. »jealousy and diamond« is a minor masterpiece of understatement that exposes the many varied nuances of a unique sound portal that leads directly to the soul. brings to mind neil young's »on the beach« and nico's »desert shore« in execution and mood, but ends up better suited for serious headphones dissection.

jspicer: tinymixtapes (tinymixtapes)


considering that none of its watershed artists released any music in 2004, kranky records had one hell of a year. while its best-known act low moved to sub pop and reportedly picked up the pace on their patented slow core, stars of the lid spent the year assembling their forthcoming drone opus. but it was a record-setting year for kranky in sheer number of releases, and the chicago label managed to uphold its reputation for consistent quality. perhaps the most impressive record to bear the logo was that of autistic daughters, the latest incarnation of musician dean roberts.
on 2003..s be mine tonight, released under his own name, roberts moved away from the abstract electronics of his past work and toward rock composition. his new project features martin brandlmayr (of trapist and radian) and werner dafeldecker; the full-band context bears immediate fruit. jealousy and diamond unfolds patiently yet wildly over its seven pieces, frequently building into full-on rock mode.
"florence crown, last replay" compresses at least five of your favorite indie rock songs into 11-plus minutes, more than once sounding like fugazi..s "long distance runner." in fact, mix those dc punk legends with low and labradford and you have the right idea. "the glasshouse and the gift-horse" is a stunning nearly-pop contraption: a gorgeous mourning melody is muted beneath droning horns that give way to bells before the rhythm section kicks in. roberts had better slow down before he finds himself on sub pop as well; meanwhile, enjoy the brilliant shine of this one.

ron schepper: stylusmagazine (stylusmagazine)


if the name autistic daughters is unfamiliar, its personnel—dean roberts on guitars and vocals, bassist werner dafeldecker (polwechsel), and drummer martin brandlmayr (trapist and radian)—certainly isn't. jealousy and diamond finds roberts continuing his movement away from the abstract electronics of all cracked medias to a greater emphasis on vocal-based song structures which emerged with the 2000 ritornell release and the black moths play the grand cinema (newly reissued on staubgold) and carried on wit h last year's be mine tonight. even though autistic daughters presents a collective vision, roberts is the natural focal point, given his dominant guitar and vocals, yet it's hardly a solo work as his colleagues shape the sound in key ways. that's not sur prising, given that the album was created by live performance; the trio laid down basic tracks in april 2003 at amann studios in vienna, and roberts recorded more voices, guitars and miscellaneous instruments with valerie tricoli in italy in the fall of 2003.
certainly the live feel is evident immediately. the opening song, »a boxful of birds«, oozes ambiance, the music slowly emerging like some awakening organism, roberts' hushed singing heard amidst electric guitar and tom toms. a radical shift occurs midway through when the music explodes into dissonant, acerbic clatter of breathless vocal yells, guitar scrapings, and percussive bangings. there's a definite song structure but it's presented loosely enough to allow for unpredictable and spontaneous moments. the group favours timeless, funereal dirges rooted in blues and folk traditions, with a curdling, slow-to-medium tempo dominating most songs; admittedly the creeping pace is somewhat wearying by the time the last song arrives. a late-night ambiance of portent and dread permeates the music, deepened by the combustible dimension of the band's playing, a tense containment that threatens to explode at any moment. naturally, roberts' fragile, quavering voice adds to the unease, as there's a constant undercurrent of desperation, even controlled hysteria, to his music that perpetually simmers below the surface. his distorted vocal and raw guitar stabs give the hard-edged »spend it on the enemy (while it was raining),« for instance, a hallucinatory quality.
at eleven minutes, »florence crown, last relay« offers the best example of the band's live approach as the trio, led by dafeldecker's quiet contrabass and roberts' quivering, ghostly vocal, unhurriedly and organically nurtures the song's development thr oughout. ray davies' »rainy day in june« is an inspired cover choice, though the song's incantatory, dirge feel hardly recalls the kinks. while the trio's elastic treatment of tempo is generally well-handled throughout, here's the rare instance where perc ussion tempo variations prove distracting. finally, in contrast to the overall dark mood, roberts' harmonium on the title track ends the album with some modestly stirring uplift.
while jealousy and diamond is uncompromising music that makes little conces sion to commerciality or accessibility, fans of roberts' previous work should find this latest chapter a satisfying developmental step. rather than his work becoming increasingly hermetic, dafeldecker and brandlmayr help expand the vistas of roberts' music and breathe into it a palpable sense of spontaneity.

by Jason MacNeil


Sometimes you get some really freakin' weird albums in the mail that, after the first eight seconds, you look at the clock and realize it will all be over in 40 or 45 minutes. This practice is just as much a blessing as it is a curse at times, depending on whether the album is worth its salt or should be used as a coaster on your new Ikea end table. Autistic Daughters is one of those albums that never lulls the listener to sleep, is never mainstream, and hardly ever boring. The brainchild of Dean Roberts and some of his close friends, Autistic Daughters sounds like the music the children in Sigur Ros's video "Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa" would be creating now. Minimal, sparse, hushed and dirge-like, the opening "A Boxful of Birds" invites the listener into their evolving and vast array of sound structure and adventurousness. Assisted by Wener Dafeldecker on contra bass and Martin Brandlmayr on drums, the song drags itself along prior to picking itself up and dusting itself off. And whereas other bands would be screaming cut by now, Autistic Daughters are getting warmed up as a haunting series of lyrics and handclaps enter the proceedings.

Autistic Daughters aren't riding anyone's coattails such as Montreal's Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Yo La Tengo. Rather they are taking everything to its lengthy logical conclusion before adding something else on. "Florence Crown, Last Relay" begins with a jazzy bass line that could start off any song by a lounge-stuck chanteuse. But Roberts's vocal, resembling a shy David Byrne, flourishes on this track as the drum brushes kick in. The flow of the song is quite solid as Roberts relies heavily on his supporting cast to keep things on a straight but hardly narrow road. As Roberts repeats one line, Brandlmayr, Dafeldecker and Valerio Tricoli flesh out the hypnotic, trance-inducing tune. Guitars are then deftly added, creating the hue of an early and extremely minimal Velvet Underground circa "Sweet Jane". It's a song that can't be easily duplicated due to all the nuances surrounding it.

Of the seven songs presented on this 50-minute album, perhaps "The Glasshouse and the Gift Horse" is the most accessible to the average rock fan. Roberts begins on guitar before his whispered vocals bring to mind Bryan Ferry if he knew the end was in sight. This quickly morphs into a fuller, Bowie-esque experiment with a harmonium and the backing vocals of Tricoli. A carnival like series of sounds makes the song's tension expand as Roberts sounds more fragile, as if he's on the verge of something either tragic or jubilant. He clings onto this feeling for a series of rich, XTC circa Apple Venus Vol. 1 moments before wrapping it up. This might come off as depressing to some, but for a real downer try "Rainy Day in June" that crawls along like a latter day Lou Reed. Sounding not quite out of tune but not quite in tune either, Roberts sounds as if he's facing something inevitable. "Cherished things are perishing and buried in the tomb," he sings as if he's about to snap.

This dreary drizzle-centric theme continues on "Spend It on the Enemy (While It Was Raining)" although it's not as powerful or mesmerizing as the previous song. Here Roberts sounds like he's ranting more than creating a great song, but again the tone and tempo gets into your blood immediately as psychedelic hues swirl around the conclusion. "In Your Absence from the Street" brings to mind Pink Floyd's The Final Cut with Roger Waters delivering one acerbic and dark line after another. There is more of a moody nature to this song as it seems like Roberts is channeling an early PJ Harvey as the music reaches a fuller, passionate pitch. By the time the title track ends, Autistic Daughters should be playing in the darker recesses of your mind over and over.




AUTISTIC DAUGHTERS - Jealously and Diamond, Kranky

Kranky manage to sieve through the muck and pluck out another breathtaking album, the debut from Autistic Daughters - a collaboration between Dean Roberts, Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayr (Radian). Those of you out there (and there are many) who revere Talk Talk's ascent into heavenly climes with their "Laughing Stock" and "Spirit of Eden" albums will immediately find themselves seduced by this project's wondrous effervescence. Except whereas Talk Talk emerged from a pop-focused universe into more subdued, experimental surroundings, "Autistic Daughters" has as its protagonists three masters of minimalism and experimentation slowly discovering how to function as a band. "Jealousy and Diamond" is profoundly rich in texture and atmosphere - a delicate Jazz hover permeates the pores of each and every track, while Dean Roberts' guitar grounds the music in an other-worldly folk amalgamation that shimmers with its extreme, hushed beauty. Breathtaking music.

Autistic Daughters
Jealousy & Diamond
Kranky
posted January 20, 2005

In late 2003, New Zealand expatriate Dean Roberts released Be Mine Tonight, an album that blurred the lines between composition and improvisation, between the electronic and the organic, and between the timeless and the endless. Roberts steadfastly refused to assert himself musically, opting instead to use his voice and guitar as a skeleton upon which his collaborators could do whatever they wished. "Real" instruments were manipulated through an array of DSP tricks, and musicians fell in and out of sync with one another at will. The songs didn't end as much as they evaporated, disappearing into oblivion as soon as everyone decided they didn't want to play anymore. It took Roberts and his collaborators 35 minutes to get through a mere four songs, and the transitions from one idea to the next were so slow and subtle that anything less than a listener's total attention would have rendered them imperceptible.

Although Be Mine Tonight was billed as a solo record, the music on it had a malleability that could only come through truly democratic collaboration…which brings me to Jealousy and Diamond, the debut album by Roberts' new band. The Autistic Daughters are a "power trio" in which Dean is backed by bassist Werner Dafeldecker and drummer Martin Brandlmayr. It is worth noting that Brandlmayr's main band, Trapist, blurs the line between composition and improvisation in a similar manner (though they're closer to jazz than they are to rock). The only other person who appears on both this album and Be Mine Tonight is composer/engineer Valerie Tricoli. Despite the lineup changes, there are only two main differences between Jealousy and Diamond and Roberts' "solo" record. The songs tend to be shorter, and Roberts and his band actually get LOUD every once in a while. Otherwise, hindsight shows that Be Mine Tonight could've easily been the first Autistic Daughters record, as the songs on it are cut from the same cloth.

Most of the songs on Jealousy and Diamond begin the same way.
Roberts listlessly picks and strums at his out-of-tune guitar and "sings" in a soft, shaky mumble that sounds almost as if he's weeping. His lyrics skirt around structure in a similar manner. For instance, "Florence Crown, Lost Replay" reads like an unfinished character sketch of a vulnerable girl ("She's not made of steel/She tends to reveal too much/and they're passing judgment"). "In Your Absence the Street" strings together seemingly disparate events to form a sad picture ("The windows are wet with condensation/The businessman has missed another flight/You run from the phone booth into a crowded station/Your heart's broken too"). While Dean sings, Dafeldecker and Brandlmayr sketch out crawling rhythms on their instruments. Brandlmayr isn't as creative a drummer as Be Mine Tonight's Antonio Arrabbito, but he uses similar extended techniques (bowed cymbals, fancy brushwork, and even bouncing balls off of his snare) to turn his kit into more than a timekeeper. Everything is quiet, and so closely miked that you can hear every incidental noise. It's a sound that is simultaneously indistinct and tactile.

These songs differentiate themselves by where they go next after said framework is established. Opener "A Boxful of Birds" ends with an uproar in which Roberts' voice shifts into a throaty wail, as a series of disembodied voices and handclaps back him up. "The Glasshouse and the Gift-Horse" abruptly goes back and forth between two completely different riffs, and gets interrupted multiple times by a cacophony of off-key toy bells. "Spend it on the Enemy (While It Was Raining)" has a danceable mid-rhythm that is emphasized by a light coating of distortion that makes Brandlmayr's drumming louder than everything else in the song. At one point, the rhythm section crashes hard on every upbeat while Roberts creates a morass of syrupy guitars, an effect that evokes Sonic Youth's Branca-fied early work.

Even on the album's loudest moments, Roberts and company pursue a sound so obtuse that if I hadn't read the press kit, I wouldn't have known that the fourth track, "Rainy Day in June," was a Ray Davies cover! This band's ability to stretch time and shift smoothly from torpor to torrent can turn almost anything into an Autistic Daughters song. Don't come to this record expecting any hooks, melodies or volume. Jealousy and Diamond is only for listeners with a lot of time on their hands, who want to chill out and be propelled into another atmosphere.

---Sean Padilla