He Can Jog - Middlemarch

He Can Jog delivers a rarefied buzz of audio excitement, containing shimmering tones, playful percussion and heart rendering melodies. He Can Jog (an anagram of John Cage) is Erik Schoster, who spent his formative years playing the trombone and photocopying Marxist zines in Madison Wisconsin. Under the golden bake of the Midwest he cultivated his sound via the clicks of the trackpad, scrapes on metal, and twists of knobs. Erik named the album ‘Middlemarch’ after George Eliot's novel because it is very much about “becoming” in the context of a community and its intersections. ‘Middlemarch’ the record documents Erik’s personal community and the relationships that were developed during its production. ‘Contractors And Architects’ for example, represents a bundle of memories from the winter of 2005 centred on Erik’s little apartment in River West Milwaukee. Nick Sanborn (from Decibully) wrote the lyrics which literally deal with lost friends and memories, but for Erik the sounds themselves have very special and particular memory associations. He counts the whole record as a catalogue of these memories of people and places and his own process of becoming. ‘Middlemarch’ spans more than four years for Erik, a time period in which his compositional process has evolved and changed. Software programming, electronic synthesis and the sampling of acoustic instruments serve to generate his sound. Erik describes his method as sculptural. He works through the sounds and allows them to direct his process. Improvisation is also a core component of He Can Jog’s method – manipulating the soundstage through custom programmed MAX patches. “Despite its irregular rhythmic intervals and heavy, thorough treatments, the overall effect of Middlemarch is benign.” – The Wire… “Combining dreamy pop music with  experimental electronics (not to mention an arsenal of bells, harps, acoustic guitars, laptop-processed bleeps, and static), an album that would please both laptop scientists and kids wanting something pretty to listen to while driving a car.” – XLR8R… “A rather beautiful and intimate record which delights and charms all the way through, thanks to carefully crafted sound formations and melodies which continuously  grow and develop. Middlemarch is one of these records that procure continuous listening pleasure by  somehow giving the impression of never sounding quite the same twice. 4/5. – Milk Factory… “A generally inviting exercise in warm electronic melodicism, ‘MiddleMarch’ inverts the usual template by spreading beats more freely over songs anchored by emotive keyboard melodies—but that's just one of the oblique strategies Schoster brings to the table.”  - textura.org… “A glorious mishmash of kinky synths and danceable beats, endlessly hooking the listener into toe-tapping, mind-boggling, ear-blasting euphoria… the production quality of a full blown studio release from Warp, without losing the home-made, DIY character that amateur computer musicians round the world strive for.” – thesilentballet.com… “An underlying richness in compositional style/content and emotional intensity… an album of serious, skillfully composed experimental electronic music that's able to bring a smile to my face by simply being exciting, entertaining, uplifting, and just plain fun to listen to. 9.5 / 10.” - earlabs.org… “A fresh and expertly crafted CD that takes digital composition to some kind of logical extreme. If this is the future of modern composition, then count me in, and once again, Audiobulb asserts itself as a highly intelligent, innovative promoter of the digital (and post –digital) aesthetic.” – whiteline.com

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