Available in The Shop.
“Vancouver producer Andy Dixon, a.k.a. Secret Mommy, spent over a year preparing his third full-length Secret Mommy. For six months, he recorded himself, his friends, and professional athletes performing various recreational activities; another six months were spent manipulating the samples into skittering glitch music. The result is more concept-driven than past Secret Mommy records, but Dixon is no newcomer to field recording – he composed his recent Hawaii 5.0 EP primarily from Caribbean sounds – and his experience shows in Very Rec’s unexpected aplomb.
Structurally, the album recalls Matmos’ A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, on which the duo built songs entirely from the slices and squelches of surgical procedures. M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel’s precision aptly mirrored the complexity of their source material, and Dixon keeps it real in a similar fashion on Very Rec, stitching together playful pieces from his rec-field recordings.
On “Weight Room,” Dixon’s friend counts steadily to 50 while doing push-ups, while “Daycare” gets elementary as scissors slice crisply through construction paper. Dixon even coughs out an entertaining first attempt at the trombone on “Music Room.” The mic placement is pristine throughout, capturing the many hidden charms inherent in everyday exercises.
Of course, it’s not the mundane alone that makes Very Rec such an enjoyable listen; it’s what Dixon does with his jock rock. A zamboni morphs into a bass drum on “Ice Rink,” while the contact between a tennis ball and racket functions naturally as snare on “Tennis Court.” There is a palpable joy in detecting the tonal similarities between the sources and their destination; the re-contextualization allows one to notice the parallels in fundamentally dissimilar things.
Dixon, however, doesn’t let concept stand in the way of a good song. “Dance Studio” is the album’s most gorgeous piece, juxtaposing a simple acoustic guitar strum with jarring rhythmic shifts in a manner redolent of The Books, and adding brass samples along the way. The track’s playful buoyancy – and Dixon’s whimsy in general – channels Mouse on Mars, especially 2000’s Niun Niggung.
The record, while certainly indebted to Matmos and Mouse on Mars, maximizes its concept; Dixon documents sound and gives life to it. Moreover, he never oversteps his source material with undue seriousness; Very Rec is about games, and despite its computerized precision, it never forgets to have fun.
- Dusted
Limited Japanese Version
Japanese edition! Alternate artwork created entirely from a HOLGA camera since the label, POWERSHOVEL JAPAN, manufactures these cameras in Asia.
Bonus Track! A song created entirely from the sounds of the HOLGA camera used to take the artwork photos.
“Equally as engaging on the sampler as Matmos, Akufen, or Matthew Herbert, Secret Mommy's latest endeavor is the culmination of nearly a year's worth of field recordings featuring friends doing recreational activities. Carefully cutting and reassembling these sounds into quirky compositions, Secret Mommy has serious fun capturing the sounds of scissors into cardboard paper, zamboni machines, or tennis balls and making them into songs with amazing results. It's conceptually heady, to be sure, but Very Rec is so much fun that you forget about all of the technical tomfoolery and get lost in the realization that many of these everyday sounds that get taken for granted can result in so much delight.
- allmusic.com
“This shouldn’t be so good! Taking the concept of "found sounds” and cranking it full of digital technology and, surprisingly, soul, this is a collection of songs made from sources such as late night soccer games and ice rinks. And for once, this approach actually sounds like music. It’s glitch-y, jumpy sound is what My Way would have sounded like had Akufen had turned off the radio and made micro-house using, well, pretty much every other sound known to man. "Dance Studio” (yes, the sounds of a dance studio) is the standout track here, too herky-jerky to be a radio or club hit, but a very nice melodic tune nonetheless, with a guitar line holding things down over an ever-changing beat, while horns bounce around in the background. This is kind of a novelty album, true, but really, how often does a music critic get to say that a novelty album is actually worth buying? None of these tracks are predictable in any way, shape or form, which is fitting, because nobody could have predicted that any of this would be as good as it is.
- Exclaim
