INKLBLOT
Love Your Mother (Audio Dregs)
[Grooves #9] US
Is Love Your Mother another attempt at primal regression to the womb-like warmth a la Boards of Canada's Geogaddi? If so, then the childhood of Jeremy Ballard was a fairly laid-back and mellow affair. Gently played guitars and drums are sometimes as prominent an element as deconstructed samples and bleeping beats, as if Nobukazu Takemura became a full member of Totroise. If anything, though, Ballard doesn't always go far enough in integrating these aspects, because many of these tracks do fall back into click-funk mode with beautiful, almost glistening synth melodies--yet even those are still as complex and involved as anything Mouse on Mars has ever done. With careful programming and copious attention to detail, artists such as Inkblot are slowly but surely expanding the textural palette of electronic music and pushing the genre inexorably forward, if not by leaps and bounds.
-Manny Theiner

Inkblot "love your mother" CD
[hand stitched heart] US
With the opening of this record, Inkblot eases you in with a glitched out song, beat wise, mixed with jazzy instrumentations that make for a smooth trip through the audio covered mind. Inkblots compositions are very textural and organic that adds just enough experimentation and straight song writing that it evens out to a nice blend of electronic songs.
"why I left the stove on" is a great song to check out. It's a good example of the sound I usually think of when I think of Audio Dregs releases. A very chill style that makes for all it's releases to be attractive.
Song 5, "after careful deliberation I find it hard to deny the fact that what we all need is less sleep and more dreaming" (such a long song title!) is a great experimental song…and ties well with the next song called "smile and wave" both more of the experimental side of Inkblot while track 9, "perhaps there was nothing left to say" is a great track for the more mellow pretty melodies Inkblot can create with giving us a more string, organ, and vibraphone sound mixture of melodies.
This CD is great, and probably my favorite in Audio Dregs releases since E*Vax's album. The CD is total with 11 songs and to be honest each song pretty much stands out on it's own, which is a good thing to keep the listener listening with this kind of music. Keeps it interesting. -John Kale

INKLBLOT
Love Your Mother (Audio Dregs)
[tonspion] DE

Behind Inkblot only one man from Austin, Texas, puts which very probably often could be inspired from its childhood. Electrical LoFi unaufgeregt in such a way and vertrackt that one would have together-played in former times gladly with him.

Spielerisch umherzwirbelnde sounds, which could under-paint a film, in which straight some children in slow motion with first autumn leaves throw themselves. There is music, reminded of children, even if she works very complex and designed. Jeremy ball pool of broadcasting corporations aka Inkblot seems to play also gladly and can these pictures with its music produce. The Texaner, which could already debuetieren with the citizen of Berlin label tomlab, creates a warmly chubby atmosphere, which lets the
actual coolness of electronic music forget briefly with clickernden LoFi Beats and flockigleichten melodies. Thus the thought arises, one would be a small familiar area, in which one probably-feels immediately. The music by
Inkblot is to be discovered somewhere between Clicks'n CUTS and Mouse on Mars, without out looking direct from one of the two drawers.
(jw)

SUPERSPRITE: Color Mixing
INKBLOT: Love Your Mother
XLR8R #62
From Portland, Oregon's lovely Audio Dregs imprint comes two excellent examples of melodic, subtly textured, lightly experimental electronic instrumental pop. Superesprite is Howard Gillam, and Color Mixing is his first full-length. It's a dreamy, drifting, melancholic affair full of lush synth-lines, gently percolating rhythms, and crispy, crunchy beats. Love Your Mother, Jeremy Ballard's second record as Inkblot, is somewhat more ambitious, in part because it's so stylistically heterogeneous. The music is very much collage-based, combining guitar, bass, piano and a multiplicity of electronic sounds and field recordings. The tracks gurgle, burble and coo in a manner that would make any mother proud, especially if you were nursed on krautrock and Mouse on Mars.
[Susanna Bolle]

INKBLOT
Love Your Mother
(ADR042) Audio Dregs 2002
11 Tracks. 39mins32secs.
[the milk factory] UK

Electronic music is in essence a laboratory for new sounds and revolutionary ideas. With the harsher side of electronica becoming quite predominant in the last few years, a more gentle side has emerged, focusing on more melodic structures. Inkblot is Texan Jeremy Ballard, and Love Your Mother is his second album, the first for Portland-based label Audio Dregs. Released two years ago on German label Tomlab, The Language Game, Ballard’s first album, presented a series of soft electronic constructions based on found sounds and warm analogue machinery layered on melancholic beat organisations. Love Your Mother pretty much takes off where The Language Game left. This brilliant collection is fuelled by sounds of discreet guitars, bass and environmental noises wrapped up in old fashioned synthetic waves, creating an intricate assortment of playful or moody atmospheric moments. Consciously juxtaposing acoustic and electronic in delicately assembled vignettes, Ballard constantly alters the focus of his tracks by suddenly switching from one to the other for a while, then re-establishing the balance. The album is unusually short, at less than forty minutes, and dense. The opening They Get By On Laughter offers a good insight on the rest of the album with its organic noises and syncopated acoustic guitar, defining a subtle recurring melodic line on which a voice hovers for a while, ebbing and flowing before emerging more prominently when the whole structure appears to collapse. Why I Left The Stove On is deceivingly more contained and linear as Ballard pushes the melody in the forefront while almost imperceptibly tempering with the background sound sources to create a perverse lullaby-like piece of sharp electronic. Later, he inverses the process again on After Careful Deliberation I Find It Hard To Deny The Fact That What We All Need Is Less Sleep & More Dream. Kicking off with some kind of interference, he develops a post-rock, guitar-led ambience, and then slowly engulfs it in distorted electronic convulsions. Persevering with the same constants for the following tracks, Ballard sums up the slight ambiguity of his compositions by exposing their diverse facets all at once in the concluding title track.
With this second Inkblots album, Jeremy Ballard presents his wicked interpretation of electronic music with more aplomb, creating a convincing, if sometimes slightly too conservative, soundtrack.

Inkblot: Love Your Mother CD
[autres directions]
In 2000, Inkblot was distinguished by publishing a first disc, The Language Game, on Tomlab. The digipak had then been designed by E*Rock, half of the label Audio Dregs. Nothing astonishing thus so that kind today at Dregs Audio a successor with this first jet. Jeremy Ballard aka Inkblot plays of the guitar and low since the 12 years age; whereas it reaches its 18 years it starts to be interested in electronics. Originating in Texas and residing there, the young man, old today of 25 years and graduate of a school of art, devotes from now on his spare time to the creation of a singular musical universe: his. On its Powerbook, it composed this very melody Love Your Mother, mixture subtle of repetitive post-rock'n'roll and padded electronics. The music of Inkblot points out Tortoise and Gastr thus LED Ground (They Get One By The Water), but also, in the disorder, B.Fleischmann and the stable Morr Music, Telefon Such Aviv or Savath + Savalas. Made recurring electronic reasons, light bleeps and subtle sound digressions creating velvety organic textures, it extends, languorous and fluid, a such sumptuous river with the negligible movements. Love Your Mother is a work with the beauty as soft as bright.
[par stéphane]

"Love Your Mother" - Inkblot (Audio Dregs)
A gentle ebb and flow characterises Jeremy Ballard's second album, following his accomplished Language Game debut for the Cologne based Tomlab with a follow up effort for a label located a little closer to his Texan home, Portland's unassuming but ever enjoyable Audio Dregs imprint. The title track, which closes the album, defines the simplicity adhered to by 10 pieces of music which precede it - where an acoustic guitar emerges tentatively from bedraggled electronic elements. This scholastic fusion of organic found sounds with analogue mechanicals though melancholic, shines with a glimmer of hope, with the crystalline melodic structures which rein throughout the running order so delicate there is a constant fear that cranking up the stereo will result in slivers of shattered CD clogging up the CD drawer.
[kingsley marshall]

inkblot: love your mother
[angry robot reviews] US
For Inkblot's second full-length release, Austin, Texas resident Jeremy Ballard moves his project from Germany's Tomlab over to America's Audio Dregs. The Angry Robot had an opportunity to sit down with a well-known IDM Fanboy to discuss the album.
Angry Robot: What do you make of Inkblot's move to an American record label? Is there something qualitatively more "American" about Love Your Mother than The Language Game?
IDM Fanboy: I wouldn't really make much of the move, to be honest. This album could just as easily have been released by Tomlab, Morr, or some other European label. There's certainly nothing particularly American sounding about the music. It's not uncommon for IDM artists these days to release albums on across a number of labels. Keep in mind, these people aren't tied to some restrictive major label contract.
AR: So, what you are saying is that there is really no progression in style from Inkblot's previous album? Is that what you are saying? Is it? Confess, human!
IF: No, that's not at all what I'm saying. In fact, this album is different from the last album; it's a bit warmer sounding, with more attention paid to melody and texture.
AR: Aha! Another piece of simple melodic ear-candy full of "child-like" hooks and twee toy percussion! It seems like anyone with a Casio and two functioning fingers can crank out IDM these days.
IF: Huh? What are you talking about? Love Your Mother actually avoids those cliches. Inkblot does an excellent job of balancing the melodic elements with more experimental textures. You might say it's Morr meets Mille Plateaux.
AR: Be that as it may, it has come to my attention that Inkblot dares to add guitar to his electronic music. Guitars are for third-rate rap-metal bands! Just who does this Jeremy Ballard person think he is?
IF: That's true, there are some guitar sounds on the album, although Inkblot most definitely does not rock out. The guitar bits are rather mellow, and tend to sound digitally manipulated. They lend the album a certain organic warmth absent from most much IDM. It seems guitars and other acoustic instrumentation has been cropping up in more IDM music these days. I'm glad for it, really. It only expands the sound palette available to the artists.
AR: Did you just say "digitally manipulated?"
IF: Yes.
AR: I knew it! More DSP trickery! These IDM types get their hands on some digital signal processing software and suddenly everyone is trying to be Aphex Twin.
IF: Actually, Inkblot uses DSP very carefully. I don't hear any hackneyed gimmicks on the album. I think the DSP elements balance nicely with the other elements.
AR: You spend too much time thinking about this stuff.
IF: Do you think so?
AR: You realise, of course, that in a single CPU cycle I could rip your puny arm out of its socket?
Note: Inkblot will be playing a free in-store show at Austin's 33 Degrees on Saturday June 22.

Gurgling Towards a Beautiful Future
[Dusted]
Artist: Inkblot
Album: Love Your Mother
Label: Audio Dregs
I believe Inkblot’s second album, Love Your Mother, can be broken down loosely into three categories of gurgling noises. About one-third of the songs I would classify as possessing the benign, even comforting gurgling sound of a pot of stew or your mom’s homemade lasagna. The next-third sound more like the gurgling of a volcano; the music in these songs brings to mind the expanse and mystery of our universe, and what lies ahead. The final third are darker and more dangerous; they are the gurgling of the scientist’s lab – the mad chemist concocting formulas for our ears. Jeremy Ballard of Austin, Texas is the human creator driving Inkblot. His previous album, The Language Game, was released on Tomlab although his current work enters the fray on the Portland, Oregon based Audio Dregs label. Nevertheless, Inkblot has maintained the European feel of the German-based Tomlab, opting for minimalist collections of noises and sparsely used guitar and percussion accompaniments. At no point does Love Your Mother feel clustered or chaotic. If I was to posit a theory on why gurgling is so prevalent in Ballard’s songs, I would likely take a long swig from some alcoholic beverage, and then embark on a long-winded, pedantic explanation involving Freud, Judeo-Christian imagery, and anything else that has to do with “water.” I will try to summarize. Gurgling occurs when water or some similar liquid substance bubbles, when it is put in motion. Water, while being the touchstone symbol for spiritual regeneration (i.e. the whole Baptism thing), also functions as a conduit for weightlessness and is therefore a substance in which we dream. These two ideas seem to resonate in Inkblot’s work. His musical landscapes portray a futuristic world – not the tenebrous world shown in films like Blade Runner – but an optimistic world in which we are regenerated and free to dream. That is not to say this album is not touched with moments of impending gloom. Nevertheless, these dark spots are accepted as equally exciting facets of the unknown world we still desire to explore. On Love Your Mother, some songs emerge from what is an otherwise tightly packaged album de-emphasizing individual pieces. “why i left the stove on” begins with a rapid beat and soon after absorbs a dirty, fuzzy bass line, until it finally yields to higher xylophone-like sound and synthesized keyboard chords, the various noises coexisting and trading off leads. The bass line is what remains in the memory though, its raunchiness suggesting a bullfrog or a flatulent plumber skipping through a sunny meadow. On “ism/asm,” Inkblot offers distant human voices, primarily that of a couple having an orgasm. Given the general nature of the album and the non-exotic feel of the song, I am more inclined to think that the sex (along with the other feelings Inkblot dwells on) is stimulated, à la the machine Woody Allen and Diane Keaton use in the film Sleeper. Press a button and you are satisfied. “moth bath” evokes a similar tie to machines, although more menacing. Here Ballard creates an ambiance similar to the one employed by Bjork on her Selmasongs EP and in the movie Dancer in the Dark, where industrial machines pulsate and threaten with their power. The track titled “after careful deliberation i find it hard to deny the fact that what we all need is less sleep and more dreaming” deserves recognition and praise for its clever name alone, but also shines for the two distinct parts ii contains in one. “after careful deliberation” opens with what sounds like an unattached thread of film spinning over and over again on a projector. After the projector has run its course, the listener gently drowns in the dissonance of too many instruments, noises coming from every angle. Confident enough not to overplay his hand, Ballard ends the song just as abruptly as it begins. In Love Your Mother, Ballard puts forth a series of compositions that tolerate the occasional divergent musical direction yet overall maintain a consistent aesthetic. It seems an analogy to visual art is apt here, seeing how Inkblot manipulates sounds – the spontaneity and immediacy of real musical instruments interacting is replaced by the absolute control of the composer. Along these lines, Love Your Mother is a gallery opening in an obscure neighborhood, where the artist has taken over a warehouse space and is now reconfiguring it for his own use. Given the chance to curate, I would divide the works of arts into three rooms based on my aforementioned gurgling theory. Then again, Ballard need not be limited by my interpretation for we should all be allowed to investigate the future on our own. Love Your Mother is a good exhibit, and hopefully many will wander in off the street to share in its elegance. -- Andy Urban

INKBLOT "Love Your Mother" (Audio Dregs) CD
[OTHER MUSIC] NYC
Inkblot's second release, "Love Your Mother," is a wonderful continuation in Jeremy Ballard's world of lo-fi electronics. Armed with a Powerbook, the Texas native's post-rock stylings gurgle around analog synths, organs, vibes and guitar. At times reminiscent of Mouse on Mars, only replace the funk with atmosphere, rhythmic repetitions loop around sounds. Drum samples are used sparingly with a large portion of tracks propelled by pulses as opposed to snare and hi-hat. Like 2000's "Language
Game," Inkblot's new release is full of the same gentle, melodic minimalism that will linger in your head long after the CD stops spinning. Recommended for late night headphone listening! [GH]

Inkblot "Love Your Mother", Audio Dregs, 2002
[loop] Chile
From Scythes, Texas, comes Jeremy Ballard, aka Inkblot, that offers his to us second delivery after its previous "The Language Game"on Tomlab. "Love Your Mother" is a disc that combines melodía and the noise, created this last one by environmental registries, happened through an edition process, that allows that they are transformed into percusivos elements. The melódicas lines on the other hand, as much are made by the use of the electronics, like by conventional instruments like the guitar, low piano and.
Inkblot puts doses balanced throughout this plate - without entering greater complexities - in oníricos, warm and ingenuous atmospheres and more suffocating and altered others, with rythmical sessions that graze with hip-hop. Really, this it is an album that is able to open itself by an own way in which interesting veins that they could be developed, from the union of sounds and the search of new sources of resonance can be discovered to be treated.
[Guillermo Escudero]

INKBLOT: The Language Game (Tomlab)
[PITCHFORKMEDIA.COM 7.8/10]
"Certain images come to mind when I imagine a "bedroom electronic musician." Some people might think of some beady-eyed chain smoker in a darkened room, opening and closing folder windows on a Powerbook in some kind of trance state. But I always like to picture bedroom musicians as generally happy types, because they've found the thing they truly love to do and have found the time to do it. I picture a warm room with wooden floors and a good light coming in through the window-- a mood somehow consistent with the idea of making something funny or aggressive or beautiful. That's the kind of scene I picture in Jeremy Ballard's bedroom. He's a guy from Dallas that makes music alone as Inkblot, and, I would wager, loves what he's doing. It's not that all the tracks on The Language Game are upbeat, or that there's a consistently jolly tone. But there's something very human about the record, the way it engages emotions in such a direct way. It's a nice change of pace from music that sounds based on some vague theory. The fourth track here is called "I Thought I Was Something Else." It's got a meek little tick-tock Casio rhythm, a cool loop of processed distortion, and a lead guitar picking out a three-note pattern. And that's enough if you pick the right three notes. Ballard knows how to craft something straightforward and pretty, but that's only part of the story. He also has a talent for conjuring the organic machine vibes. The bass on "And Here We Are" sounds like it's coming from something with scales, which works well next to the light piano melody that plays lead. "Even Now with These Robot Arms" actually recalls Labradford at 45 RPM, using electric guitar, piano and nervous digital buzzing to peel open space like a banana. There's guitar all over The Language Game, but it's always either processed to the point where it becomes just another electronic element, or it seems to flaunt its obvious tone source. But in both cases, it's used as just another sound in the sequencer. And for a while, I found myself occasionally irritated by the loop-heavy production. Too many tracks seemed to consist of a half-dozen sounds, each set to run its own pattern on the same grid. But the simplicity and repetition are the best things about this record. It's nice to hear a record using this kind of sound palate to make something so listenable. It seems like it's coming from a good place, even when the sound itself is unsettling. "Greyscaled" starts with a bit of downcast singing, like Looper's Stuart David after a bad day at the girlfriend's. The rest of the track is instrumental, though-- a lovely, dark, swaying thing with guitars, organs and distant playground voices. Enough to make it worth hanging out in the bedroom a little longer."

InkBlot -The Language Game (Tomlab)
[elctronic music 411]
If there's one label that doesn't get enough credit lately, it's Tomlab. They've been around for how many years and their CDs are still hard to find? As would be expected from a label run out of Cologne, Inkblot (himself a Texas native) produces strange, processed synth tracks that are simulataneously very raw / resonant and delicate. It's hard to place his influences, but I would say that it's closest to an imaginative cross between the percussion of current "experimental house" (safety scissors, Brinkmann, Jan Jelinek) and the warm melodies of IDM. Very upbeat and 4/4 with little hints of guitar, reminds me a bit of Michael Zorn. Truely creative bedroom electronica. Lovely digipack artwork by E•Rock (part of Audio Dregs, brother to one E•Vax).

INKBLOT: The Language Game (Tomlab)
[ALTERNATIVE PRESS]
...."Playful cubistic melodies with dry digital sounds generate clear pictures moving in parallel as if going out for playing like people on daily commute...comfort that finds a room between clicking lofi and clattering funk." DE:BUG (Germany) "...A scenery in which Texas homebrewn Jeremy Ballard exposes his inner soul. The productions find their fragility built up ascetically. Fragility, it's a power." PLASTIC (Holland) "Cologne, Germany's Tomlab must be the nicest label around, because everyone of its releases charms your socks off. Texas producer Jeremy Ballard (aka Inkblot) melds post-rock atmospherics with electronic post-processing for a sound that is at once familiar and all his own. At times, Autechre's distressed melancholia prevails; elsewhere the sound is more down-home. "Greyscaled" pairs Tortoise's wistful, melodic bass lines with grinding breaks, while the similarly drawling "Even Now With These Robot Arms" passes reverb-laden guitar through delicate electronics. One of the album's more organic moments, it recalls Labradford's heartland electronica; but "Miko Rides Again", a bleepy, off-kilter electro affair puts Inkblot back in the camp of DUB Records and Mouse on Mars."

INKBLOT: The Language Game (Tomlab)
[XLR8R ]
...It's just grand to have notes float into your recessed ears and let your green mind drift away. Inkblot makes music for frog happiness. Tadpoles adore his soft guitar, bullfrogs thirve on his tongue-lashing electro kicks..."

INKBLOT: The Language Game (Tomlab)
[OTHER MUSIC]
"Inkblot is the project of a 22-year-old wunderkind Jeremy Ballard who produces these gorgeous melodies live, a mad scientist in his lab running from sampler, to keyboards, to bass, to guitar, and back again. Tight, playful snares hold down the rhythm while bubbling, gurgling electronics unexpectedly pop up here and there, piano in a minor key floats throughout, slowly pulling you in until these songs are permanently stuck in your head and you walk around all day humming these beautiful obscure tunes. Think of a combination of to rococo rot and B. Fleischmann or Mouse on Mars and Steve Reich. A beautiful edition to any collection and a must for fans of releases on the Morr or Sonig labels. Lo-fi electronic music of the highest quality." [JS]