Bradford Cox would have made a hell of a music promoter if he hadn’t decided to form Deerhunter. I first heard of Casino Versus Japan several years ago from Cox’s best of decade list. The man has a way of talking about a band that makes you want to listen. He’s always been a very vocal music fan, so when he put a weird little electronica album in his top 20 of the 2000s I felt I needed to check it out. It turns out he was justified. Over the years I keep coming back to Casino Versus Japan’s stunning 2002 album Whole Numbers Play the Basic; an electronic record of such warmth and charm.
The comparison people always jump to has been Boards of Canada, but I don’t buy it. Erik Kowalski may dig nostalgia, but he shoots for a different aesthetic with Casino Versus Japan. While BoC creates vignettes and distinct scenes throughout their records, Kowalski is more focused on taking a few motifs and giving them space to develop and breathe over the course of the record. Also, while BoC’s form of nostalgia often has a ghostly layer of creepiness, an album like Whole Numbers is sunny and optimistic as it looks back at the past. Kowalski’s greatest skill is in taking complex and multi layered tracks and making them sound effortlessly simple.
The sequencing is one of the records greatest strengths to the point where instead of individual tracks sticking with you, a certain pairing or run of a couple songs become highlights. The run of tracks from the opener “Variation of the Two” is a strange trip, but it flows like water. The hazy hip-hop of “Moonlupe” gives way to the tranquil but jittery “Aquarium,” which hypnotizes you over five minutes, just to break the spell with the 70 second burst of sunshine that is “The Possible Light.” There are little journey’s like that throughout the record.
A couple years ago I got to see Erik Kowalski as one of the openers at a Deerhunter show, maybe a year after Cox made that list. He came on first, and started performing for a very small crowd. No one there seemed to be familiar with him, and a one guy was complaining that he thought Real Estate was supposed to be opening (for what it’s worth they came on next, looking vaguely pissed, and complained about the sound for most of the set. It was uncomfortable to say the least.) There wasn’t a huge crowd for him, and some loudly talking people didn’t seem to be paying attention, but Kowalski was just killing it, creating his own world on stage and (if you gave him a chance) bringing you into it. Afterwards as he sat at his merch table, I thanked him for his set, checked out his CDs and quickly headed back to the stage. Deerhunter played a great set, but the best part of that night was Casino Versus Japan and I wish I’d told him that at that table. At the end of his artist bio on rateyourmusic.com Kowalski wrote, “One of my goals is to have 50 records created before i die.” That’s a pretty difficult goal, (and the project’s output has slowed considerably), but he shouldn’t worry, because something as utterly gorgeous as Whole Numbers Play the Basic could top 50 records from a lesser artist.