Daniel Hopkins

This review is from The email webzine Vital Weekly, Republished here. This review was written by Frans de Waard.

HURRA CAINE LANDCRASH – UNANSWERED QUESTIONS (CD by Split Femur Recordings)
Along time ago, in Vital Weekly 500 we reviewed work by Daniel Hopkins, also
known as Hurra Caine Landcrash, as well as HL. Back then his work was
released on his own No Ground Processes, here he finds his way to the real
CD format on Split Femur Recordings. Back then we already noted his shift
towards the use of the guitar, which he now worked out into ‘Unanswered
Questions’. If I understood things correctly Hopkins drops shells, pebbles
and stones on a guitar, picks up the sound in his laptop using ‘various
filters and effects’ and explores as such the guitar. The blurb raves about
‘on one hand of no wave punk and then sweeping to more ethereal esoteric
sound-scapes’. I must say I had a hard time hearing the no wave punk, but
then perhaps I had the wrong records when I was young. The ‘ethereal
esoteric’ part I can dig, but that sounds a bit negative, or rather some
musical area in which you rather not be. Hurra Caine Landcrash’s ‘Soul’, the
opener is kinda not like the album: it
distorts and not in a nice way. The tracks to follow are much nicer and work
from a microsound/drone perspective. Even when Hurra Caine Landcrash doesn’t
do an original job here, despite his perhaps somewhat curious approach in
working, the music sounds all quite nice, except of course for that first
track, which is an odd ball. Think Fennesz, of course I’d say, Deupree or
other microsound artists, and Hurra Caine Landcrash fills in the holes they
left with quite an intelligent mixture of his own techniques. Moody,
atmospheric and with the guitar leaping into sound areas which may seem to
be from an altogether different nature, this is quite a nice album. (FdW)
Address: http://www.splitfemurrecordings.com