Planningtorock
W (DFA,2011)
W (DFA,2011)
while she is a new name to many, those who know planningtorock tend to form a strong emotional connection with her work. no doubt about it, janine is totally out there on her own, and with 'w', she's raised the bar several notches, producing a powerful soul odyssey that ravishes the listener and comfortably ranks as one of the dfa label's finest releases. so how does it sound? well, it's melancholy and euphoric, epic in scale yet deeply personal, strikingly alien but weirdly familiar, and always daring and original.
THE BREAKS from planningtorock on Vimeo.
For the follow-up to 2006’s chamber-pop debut Have it All, Janine Rostron – aka Planningtorock – keeps the tracks tightly encased within a minimalist, spectral netherworld. One of the more challenging acts on James Murphy’s DFA label, the Berlin-based Boltonian creates unearthly atmospheres through the careful layering of repetitive, constrained orchestral flourishes, drum loops and heavily processed vocals.
W’s closest reference points are Fever Ray or the Knife (Planningtorock in fact collaborated with the latter on the opera Tomorrow, In a Year in 2010), but despite the shared aesthetic approach, Rostron’s songs have an intimacy entirely their own. Highpoints such as The Breaks have a strangely uncanny melodrama to them: while the emotional register belies a love of orthodox pop, the mode of expression imbues the songs with a haunting otherness. Such qualities demonstrate Rostron’s willingness to explore the borderlands between songcraft and technology, and make W a deeply imaginative and genuinely distinctive record
if we had to settle for one word: audacious. there's plenty of saxophone and strings a go-go, but not the cloying kind that lure you into an 'emotional' state. from the pulse and jabbing pizzicatos on 'doorway', planningtorock unveils the unsettling yet heady allure of 'w'. or in janine's own on-the-money way, 'a dark sexy creature that sways with the relentlessly swinging propeller sound'. she very clearly knows her own feelings. a further example of this arrives swiftly in the form of 'the one', with the strangely distended vocal take cutting through the usual lovelorn tropes to hand deliver a deep love with all its layers and experience. planningtorock also loves to toy with convention and the tongue in her cheek is often visible; on the 'suckular love' of 'manifesto' and her use of wailing within the maelstrom of 'i am your man'.
'w' is littered with passionate gems like 'the breaks', the baroque boogie of 'living it out', its grunting and growling straight out of yoko ono's 'walking on thin ice', the sharpened percussive scythe of 'jam', the swirling otherness and grace of 'black thumber' and a provocative take of arthur russell's 'janine'.
planningtorock stretches sounds and curdles her voice, a queasy rococo rush that has an intoxicating quality. janine composed the 12 songs that make up 'w' over the last three and a half years, mainly recording in solitude in her berlin studio. a gifted producer, she sings and plays everything - keyboards, strings, guitar - and mixed the record in sweden at the end of 2010 during an intense session with christoffer berg. additional contributions came from her icelandic friend hjo rleifur jo nsson, who she recorded playing percussion which was later used as samples sprinkled across the album, and drummer pat mahoney, taped in new york. on the whole, though, janine prefers to work alone.
one listen to 'w' is all it takes to realise that planningtorock is not tethered to the facts of janine's everyday life or to any kind of authentic or so-called honest voice. planningtorock is about ideas and fantasy. it's about emotion and exploring the unknown. this bolton wanderer will keep you wondering for quite some time.
