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Reviews
The
Stranger , January 30, 2007
By Eric Grandy
PLAN B - I'm the Captain, Where We Going?
(GG0022)
Seattle multi-instrumentalist/producer James
van Leuven tours Europe and the states with his trusty
laptop "the same way a singer-songwriter travels
with their guitar," writing and recording as
he goes. While Where We Going does possess a certain
sense of global restlessness—thanks in large
part to the French/English vocals of collaborators
Elisabeth Perle and Krista Warden—what really
marks it as traveling music is how well it alternately
insulates and melts into the background, each essential
for scoring days spent on trains and nights spent
in hostels.
A few of the album's tracks are genuinely ambient,
and many more of them are just unobtrusively soft
micro pop. But the humorous and heartfelt collage
against capitalism, "Double Crossin' Little Rat,"
is a fully engrossing contraption of armchair hiphop
assembled from sampled back-porch guitar strumming,
dusty beats, and vintage political rhetoric. The video
for the song (not included on the CD, but easily found
on the internet) is an adorable, sepia-toned send-up
of the Soviet Kino-pravda in which assembly-line workers
at a Moog factory are agitated into a breakdancing
work stoppage.
Other engaging tracks include "Backside Grind,
pt. II," in which lovely French singing is surrounded
by ghostly samples and occasionally overwhelmed by
echoing guitar fuzz, and the psychedelic drum 'n'
bass odyssey of "Curtains." Throughout much
of Where We Going however, van Leuven seems content
just creating pleasant atmospheres.
- ERIC GRANDY
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Seattle Sound
Magazine, January, 2007
By Joseph Riippi
PLAN B - I'M THE CAPTAIN, WHERE WE GOING?
(GGOO22)
In the last month of 2006, the Billboard
200 saw at its peak the latest record from Dr. Dre
protege, The Game, followed directly by fellow rapper
Akon. "I Wanna Love You," Akon's duet with
Snoop Dogg, had already conquered multiple singles
charts. Popular music is full of these overlapping
palimpsests --one record succeeds because of its relationship
or likeness to what came before it. The Game bulds
on the originality of Dre; Akon builds to Snoop. For
an artist of originality to intersect with mass appeal,
a back catalog must have already built a dedicated
fancase(see Radiohead's last three records, The Beatles
post-1965, and U2 for examples).
But Plan B's captivating new record, I'm The Captain,
Where We Going?, faces a different issue.
A look at the current top 10 suggests that the price
of popularity totals a Christian country sensibility,
a rap album with plenty of renowned guest appearances,
or Josh Groban's hair. Yet as I'm The Captain begins,
creaking footsteps establish a meter in found-sound
that bespeaksa high level of instrumental prowess
(iced with the production help of the incomparable
Phil Ek). The emergence of electronic harps and drums
articulate an elliptical instrumental and the record's
defiantly unpopular genre --non-house electro-pop.
In short, mood music. In order to find success with
I'm The Captain, James van Leuven (the man behind
the moniker) must overcome easy comparisons to the
recent work of bands like Air and the Cocteau Twins.
Binding to them risks being overshadowed by them.
Why listen to Philip Glass when you already have Terry
Riley?
As the third track and first proper song, "Backside
Grind pt. II," begins (following 27 seconds of
distorted Animaniacs samples), a thick "La Femme
D'Argent" bassline and French vocals (beautifully
pronounced by Elisabeth Perle) tie van Leuven and
his vessel firmly to the Mediterranean dock of French
electronica. But as the song and album progress, the
listener is greeted by subtle surprises. Intricate
delicacies on the sweeping "Daylight Breaking"
and entropic declines like those of "Curtains"
elicit a tension and suspense that brilliantly illuminate
the misdirection and loss of the record's title. In
truth, the deeper one listens to van Leuven's creation,
the further one descends into a world of sound altogether
gorgeous and better than any initial expectations.
May the masses lend him their ears. - JOSEPH RIIPPI
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Xlr8r Downloads, November 2006
Xlr8r Staff
Don't be fooled by the title
of Seattle-based Plan B's first full-length I'm The
Captain, Where Are We Going? Spearheaded by James
van Leuven, Plan B know exactly what direction they're
headed with their blend of rock, pop, and electronic.
Crisp, programmed beats and wobbly guitar notes make
an unlikely pairing with the feather-like quality
of the vocals, yet somehow the many musical elements,
along with the numerous guests artists, merge into
a single, enjoyable entity on the album.
_____________________________________
Tonight Go with Plan B
The
Stranger: Line Out :
September 2006
Seattle’s Plan B are throwing a CD-release bash
tonight at the War Room with sonic comrades Foscil,
M. Evans, and Hidden Habitats (DJs Bumble Bee, Kamui,
and Hideki). I’m the Captain, Where We Going?
(Fourthcity), Plan B’s first disc since 2003’s
Keepsake EP, brings much reason to celebrate. James
van Leuven & Co. have expanded their sound palette,
embellishing their hiphop foundation with orchestral
grandeur, gorgeous female vocals, and various string
instruments that evoke old Europa and Gabor Szabo’s
fluent ethno jazzadelia. Recorded in Seattle and in
various European cities, I’m the Captain comes
freighted with blissful atmospheres, dreamy melodies,
unconventional textures, and transporting, head-nodding
beats. And on the title track and “Curtains,”
Plan B construct their most ambitiously cosmic compositions
to date. I thought somebody had slipped in a Miles
Davis disc from 1970 for a while there.
Here’s
the Plan B lineup for tonight:
James van Leuven: Drums/Laptop/Bass Guitar
Bill Jones: Trumpet
Sarah Standard (Carissa’s Wierd): Violin
Anita Rendall: Violin
Adam Swan (Foscil, Truckasaurus): Keyboards
Pat Kearney (Automaton): Bass
Dann Gallucci (Murder City Devils, Modest Mouse):
Guitar
Krista Warden: Vocals
Leigh Gable: Keyboards/Bass
_____________________________________
The Stranger Weekly Newspaper, Feb 15, 2006
Alternate States, Alternate Mates
Plan B Have a Better Way
BY NICHOLAS SCHOLL
If there's one thing we gleaned from Bush's recent
State of the Union address, it's that we need to keep
it zipped. Of course the president didn't actually
say it, but from the domestic surveillance program
to Cindy Sheehan's arrest for wearing an antiwar T-shirt,
the message was clear: Voices of dissent are, to this
administration, a threat on par with terrorism. Better
to stay silent and keep to yourself.
Even though he's usually holed up in a basement twiddling
knobs, Plan B's frontman, James van Leuven, feels
the malcontent seeping in. "There is definitely
something going on today with hope and fear, security
and freedom," says van Leuven. The observation
may seem obvious, but it is particularly important
coming from someone deemed a "laptop musician."
With our search-engine queries being cached and turned
over to intelligence agencies, we find our salvific
global connectivity being bucked off the ass it rode
in on—the home computer. It makes this a strange
time for music; many artists have become almost desperately
political in a time when being so has become increasingly
dangerous.
The evidence is in Plan B's music. Drawing equally
from IDM, ambient, indie pop, and hiphop, van Leuven's
work with his ensemble (well, ensembles—we'll
get to that) is juggling more complex sonic metaphors,
inclining to more accurate—if not outright—reflections
of what's going on around us. On "Systemitis,"
a track from their Keepsake EP, Plan B pit a lyrically
evocative trumpet solo against a sneering drum line.
Various synth voicings and samples create a nagging
interplay of mini-discords. It's a sound that differs
markedly from the 2002 release, Like a Ship Sailing—a
downtempo affair with some nascent impetuosities.
Now that those mini-discords are manifesting in our
opaque political climate, van Leuven and friends are
kicking it up several notches. On the newest album,
I'm the Captain, Where We Going?, the group heat up
the bpms and delve into more abstract territory. "Curtains"
was born out of van Leuven's consideration of "corruption
in government and... the way our castes are built
to empower the rich and cripple the poor." Like
most everyone, he realizes that such a construct cannot
last. The track sends the entire mass into a frenzied
fracas that rends the curtain with a spectacular blast
of noise and distortion. The unholy of holies now
laid bare, the track ends in a troubled and desolate
soundscape where one can hear the seeds of some new
order to come.
When it comes to bringing masses to a musical huddle,
James van Leuven is a bit of a maestro. A serendipitous
meeting at his first show in London won him a new
label (ggoo22) and a bevy of musicianly friends, some
of whom he adopted into the Plan B family. When he
tours, he has two crews—U.S. and Europe—that
can overlap and interchange depending on the city,
date, and availability of the individuals.
Van Leuven is big on a sense of community and participation.
Now he's shepherding in his home pastures: Working
with Andy Rohrmann of Scientific American, he will
audition an ensemble of 12 to 20 musicians to create
what he calls a Laptop Orchestra. The difficulty will
be balancing composition and improvisation, he says,
especially since the laptop is not given to spontaneity
and its wielders are used to being solely responsible
for their total music output. But it's projects like
this that will coax the laptop out of its cradle and
grow it into an instrument capable of shouldering
its own virtuosos.
When asked what kinds of music he's currently enjoying,
van Leuven says, "Oh, the listening question..."
His refreshing straightforwardness makes his reply
even more surprising. He likes digging through old
punk favorites, dub, and soundtracks, but his heart
is in the subtleties and polyrhythms of Latin folk
music, its unselfconscious alternations of various
time signatures. The reason is clear: "My approach
to songwriting is different, I think. I confuse singer-songwriters
when I ask them to play my songs. I am fundamentally
a songwriter, but I write from the drum stool. It's
different when you think that way. My approach to
songwriting is more akin to soul music, funk, jazz,
Cuban, Mexican folk, hiphop, sample-based music, dance
music—music that puts the beat as the central
idea of the song and then starts building from there.
[They] all share this principle; it's the beat that
makes it that style. I believe in that principle,
but I don't necessarily stick to fitting myself into
any one genre."
Plan B is, from the ground up, inherently centered
not on the ego or the Music Maker, but on the music
itself. The beat is fundamental, calling into action
whatever instruments and personages that it requires.
That's the reason for all the numerous musicians,
collaborations, instruments, and genre smatterings.
It is music being made out of its own necessity; it
asks to be heard.
Van Leuven is into beats for another reason: He loves
to dance. In his early days, he'd perform live remixes
of Plan B cuts and use drum breaks to breakdance for
the audience. It's a connection that he's putting
to use at the end of the year when he heads to Austria,
where his compositions will be fully orchestrated
into the accompaniment for a modern-dance production.
When we start getting into music-nerd talk, van Leuven
says, "I really need to be going. My girlfriend
wants to go salsa dancing tonight," proving an
important point about him and his work: Yes, we can
stick in our earbuds and dissent quietly with the
music, but our protest is more powerful when together
we take up plan B and baile.
