Musical Drippings

Journal sielwolf's Journal: Musical Drippings 7

Journal by sielwolf on Sunday December 18, 2005 @09:58PM

So we're approaching the end of the year in music. So outside of some last minute purchases, I'll hack together my year in review which will discuss the statistics I've been keeping about all this shit I've been buying.

A few weeks ago subgeek asked me to take a look at Jackson and his Computer Band who has been generating tremendous buzz in the noiseless ether of the internet and indie mags. I had been recalcitrant for a while just because this schooner makes his own wind but after hearing some nuggets of "Radio Caca" on the Warp Records page and after some nudging I went out to the Sound Garden (in beautiful gentrified Fells Point, Ballmer) to pick it up.

Before grabbing it I decided to take a look around and stumbled, by complete accident, on a Juan Atkins comp, Metropolis Records: 20 Years (1985 - 2005), which completely blew me away because it was put out by Tresor, a pretty reknowned but German label, instead of Submerge, the Detroit superlabel that handles all the Metropolis/Transmat and other seminal Detroit Techno releases. But the Europeans, in their unquenchable effort to catalog such things, beat everyone out of the gate with this two disc necessary release. And I use 'necessary' in all flavorings of the word. If you are interested in electronic music and you aren't interested in chasing down way old vinyl, this is necessary. This covers the whole gamut: from Juan's tentative first steps in the electro funk of Cybotron to his breakthrough as Model 500. There's even little gems such as one offs like Infiniti or 3MB that a real collector would have to scrounge for all in this magnificent collection.

Juan Atkins impact really can't be understated. And this isn't in that "well it was revolutionary at its time but it is dated as fuck" impact that sort of taints all those old hip-hop singles. Maybe Techno doesn't live on the burning edge of The Latest Hotness as hip-hop does (where a rapping style or production can pass out like a fad in three weeks) but there's something absolutely gripping about the work on 20 Years. Perhaps all the future talk was a long term investment that matured better than the short term bonds rap caters in. In an odd choice, the assembly is out of chronological order creating a (probably more appropriate) mix of sounds. This probably helps stave off the maggots with the electro bang-thwump of "Alleys of Your Mind" merging into the delicious early techno of Model 500's "Future". "Vessels in Distress", "No UFO's", "Nightdrive (Thru Babylon)", "Cosmic Cars". Man, Juan did it all. One of the first to hide behind a half dozen faceless monikers (if you want a great breakdown from the source, check out this short feature on PFM). If anyone needs a lesson to what the division between Electro and Techno is, they can just look right here. This might suit a lot of other folks out there with the sort of blanket usage of Electro people use out there. I guess it must have more cache, sound less treaded, classic. I first noticed it in The Beat My Heart Skipped when the protagonist specifically says "Electro" and then obviously plays some disposable House track. And now NME calls Depeche Mode an "Electro pioneer" when they've always walked a very goth pop path. Not to shit on anybody's parade, but it's like calling my 401k doing 20% last year The Real Hip-Hop. It just dilutes the actual thing and makes all these interesting niches generic fodder for journalistic statement.

And 20 Years does a great job of showcasing both the beauty and limitations of the sound. Techno was in ways about more: more complicated drum programming, with the long sustaining synthesizer effects that moved out there beyond the conventions of the R&B roots. Of course Juan Atkins did more than just up the tempo. There's a whole approach and quality that differentiates it. His Techno got tired when it got commodified by others and became just the next hot thing to burn out and throw back onto the street. Here you can see how it preserved, through two decades, and still finds progressions full of excitement.

In our high-impact critical culture, Jackson Fourgeaud, is being set up by the likes of the Wire as the next generation of the same sort of injection. First the modest claims of upsetting French House (understandable after Daft Punk's forgettable release this year) then this month he became the savior of the whole span of electronic music. A bit much for a guy with just one album. Sadly instant history waits for no man. Better to just predict the tectonic shifts and run the print.

Jackson and his Computer Band does quite a bit, but anyone familiar will recognize the geneology. The intro "Utopia" bangs with the classic French passion for soul and blues mixed with the drums and sequences that are best described as lush. Its the sort of paradox where you could have the Gaul sexuality of Air's "Sexy Boy" and have it merge seemlessly with the breakdancing funk of Daft Punk's "Harder Faster Better Stronger". What Jackson brings is an understanding of the currents in glitch and IDM and synchs all these parts up into something fresh. A different producer could take the parts used in "Utopia" and make a pretty standard House track but Jackson seems to run all of them instead through a meatgrinder saw-wave so they appear to stutter by like an image through the slats of a fence. Only seen from a window of a highspeed train does the go-stop collapse into a zoetrope. The skill is evident: where most glitch or IDM is abstract at best and unlistenable at worse, Jackson retains that soul that runs at the heart of French have hold on.

The result is something both unnerving and consuming. "Rock On" has these big bursts that go off at every step of the beat. Like the stage is being rocked at sea and you only catch a glimpse every half second under a strobe. Everything moves with big brassy steps.

Of course I'd point out Arco5, another glitchy French act that has done something very similar. While their work wasn't as brazen as that of the Computer Band, its still on the same trail of French deconstructionism.

But I've come here to praise Jackson, not bury him. Shit, I hate it when reviews get like this. So what stops me from completely falling in love with this release? Well with track 5 ("Oh Boy"), Jackson makes a criminal step of building a song around a story his five year old niece recites. And anyone who has tried to follow a five year old's story can understand how marginally intelligible the result is. Compare that to "TV Dogs" where Mike Ladd's poetry is more able to find the grove of Jackson's complex funk. A sort of Bond theme where the mixer is absolutely attacked. Its just the synch you get when two people understand what goes into a song. "Oh Boy" is a mistake that earns instant skip status as it just never rises above disonnance. Smash generally alternates between an ethereal funk and bombast, with tracks such as "Hard Tits" and "Radio Caca" exempifying both. It's very good. Though it does commit one final sin of having "Radio Caca" contain a hidden 'track' (mostly forgettable blips) that makes it over 20 minutes long (mostly dead air). That's almost unforgivable in this digital age where I don't want to waste my HD space with dead air. Smash shows a lot of promise. But it doesn't annihilate as many conventions as the establishment hopes. That the revolution had been there the entire time and only now they saw it, proclaiming it exgenesis. Well, who's fault is it for their willful blindness? Luckily Jackson and his little outfit shows promise and I'll look forward to what he has in store for us.

"Wait wait wait," you who follow your boy's /. chats with tweezers. "Hadn't subgeek pointed you to Warp's Bleep.com to seek out that Jackson album?"

To which I would answer yes.

You think for a moment and then query, "Well then why were you in Fells Point? Shouldn't you have just downloaded it? You could've had it then! On Demand!"

You're beginning to sound like a Comcast advert.

"Shit- you know what I mean. Right?"

Yes yes. I guess its a bit of philosophy. For one I like discs. I like the collection. There's something impressive about many many albums, all sorts, just lined up together. I like how they all look. Second, I love the Greater Community of music outside the big box retailers. I understand what they (the storefronts willing to showcase a lot of music) bring to us. So I want to do my part for keeping them upright. I buy a good deal of music right?

"I guess you could say that."

So I want to do my part by letting them have my business. And who knows what else I will find? I had no idea Tresor had that Juan Atkins comp out. Sure, I had to deal with the counter guy looking at my purchase and saying "Oh man. This one is- [he holds up the Jackson and his Computer Band disc] AWESOME!"

"Heh. Funny. We always like those stories."

I can understand. There's that social pecking order thing that is absolutely wierd. Like everyone has to show their little hand sign that they are totally Down and With It but they can't be overt about it so they have to play it off real casual like. A wierd off hand remark that demonstrates their Vast Cultural Knowledge.

"Oh yeah?"

And it kills me. Because they can't ever just come upright and say it. Or demonstrate any sort of populist leanings. You can't just have only listened to the Velvet Underground last month and you can't be interested in Nico just because Wes Anderson used a track of her's in The Royal Tannenbaums. And though you'd probably be happy with the soundtrack they've gotta come up with some question like "Do you have that Nico album where Jackson Browne wrote some of her songs?" like its a goddamn episode of Jeopardy and we're all out to stump each other and anyone who goes out on a round gets dropped into a pit of vipers.

"..."

So they say "Huh?" and then it comes up that it's Chelsea Girl and Alex Trabeck is about to pull the lever on them so they shout out something like "That's the greatest fucking piece of music ever recorded in the universe" in some attempt that hyperbole will make up for some supposed moment of weakness only they've gotta couch it in some even deeper bit of trivia like "I think John Cale really introduced her to the harmonium." like how we somehow give a shit and this brings us anywhere closer to a deeper truth on... shit, anything.

"What are we talking about again?"

Buying music.

"So you're going to review Chelsea Girl now?"

Well no. Though I will in a few days. I just wanted to inject this entry with a bit of human interest.

"Oh ok. Like the local news."

I guess. But I brought this up because an album like Drexciya's Lab Rats XL (Mice or Cyborg), the last album from the techno pioneers is the sort of album the guys at Sound Garden or anywhere else wouldn't give a second look. The irony of a more eclectic and fundamental release not getting the jizz bath something more pedestrian would get.

"So you bought this Drexciya album there then."

Well no. I saw it on Bleep but I bought it from someplace in Germany via GEMM, in keeping with my "If I can buy it from a store, I will. Otherwise I'll get it online" manifesto.

"Did you buy anything online?"

Oh yeah. Some old Dataphysix stuff.

"Are you going to review that?"

No I'm going to review this Drexciya disc. But I'll promise to review that stuff later.

"Ok... BTW. Why the fuck is my dialogue written for me?"

Huh?

"My dialogue. All these witty comments in the quotations you are bantering with."

Oh, I dunno.

"Seems kind of odd. You, the author of this entry sort of forcing me, the reader, to what you want to say. Like I would actually say any of this stuff you have me saying here-"

Well maybe. I just wanted to make a point.

"More like a conversation with yourself. Kind of sad really..."

Shit, fine! You want me to review this last disc and then get out of your hair?

"Sure."

Great. So Lab Rats XL (Mice or Cyborgs). From outward appearances, this looks like it's actually a disc by some group called Lab Rats XL (who name all their tracks "Lab Rat 1", etc). But inside it's revealed that this is the posthumous last Drexciya "storm" (much like the Transllusion release from Rephlex).

What is interesting is how cohesive the personality is on this album, even in the absense of final polish (obvious given that two of the tracks are "remixed" by outsiders). This also has some of Stinson's best tracks on here. "Reality Check" has these long sweeps that decay with volume in something both mournful and highly futuristic. The act balances on a pin. The synths vibrate with cursors of communication. The pleasure I've always gotten from these later day Detroit acts is how they don't let the loops off the hook. The loops mutate in slight variation and so perform unique combinations throughout a single track. "Reality Check" has this wonderful coo that warms it way up to you. Similarly "Fruktos" has a deep bottom of bass that sizzles on the tip of your speakers. A part of me is saddened by the loss. Yet another, maybe a greater part, finds comfort in all of this. The sort of future utopia that is beautiful in a way that only your mind can imagine. The Drexciya stuff is less kinetic than what Juan Atkins does as Model 500 but you can see the same hallmarks. An impossible dream ironically from the dead husk of Detroit. It speaks about the great possible of artistic expression. Sadly Lab Rats XL is just 6 tracks and 36 minutes. What it says makes it hard to really call it a coda.

Juan Atkins Metroplex Records: 20 Years (1985-2005) *****
Jackson and his Computer Band Smash ****
Drexciya Lab Rats XL (Mice or Cyborgs) ****

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