| #653 |
|
2003 |
Perilous 652 Straight to some reviews now and first up is the new release from The Bug simultaneously out on Rephlex (Eruope and here) and Tigerbeat6 (for the USA). Kevin Martin has been hammering away for well over a decade with his obsessions with intense music - the echo space of dub, the visceral and primal blurts of free jazz, and the industrial density of art metal and noise. Apart from his early work as God, his recent Techno Animal album with his regular collaborative project with fellow explorer Justin Broaderick formerly a Napalm Death guitarist, explored an immensely hard post-apocalyptic view of hip hop. Naturally the MCs of choice here were drawn largely from the Def Jux stable. Now Martin has turned to dancehall. Dancehall has been having an increasing influence beyond Jamaica of late most obviously in mainstream pop and ‘urban’ r&b/rap. Timbaland and the Neptunes have plundered the rhythms of dancehall for their own but at the same time dancehall rhythms have been plundering those very same productions for inspiration and the circular time between inspiration and rip-off is getting shorter and shorter. At the same time, lyrically, dancehall is not exactly always palatable. Neither is the raw dog-eat-dog capitalism that fuels the Jamaican (and also the US) ‘urban music industry’. And there’s the rub. In Martin’s hands the bleakness that hides behind the shimmering bling-bling chatter, the detritus of pre-millennial Old Testament religious bigotry, combined with the effects of the corporate imperialist pillage of globalisation is drawn out in sound form. The riddims are appropriately harsh, industrial, and the lyrics from New Flesh’s Toastie Taylor, superfast MC Daddy Freddy amongst others rile against new millennium globalisation spitting out rhymes with venom as Martin pushes the drilling beats and bass drops. But its not all noise, indeed it is nothing of the sort, with Martin carving out meticulously cold icy echoes in the gaps between beats and the production is far from lo-fi. On the slower tracks Roger Rogerson takes things down a notch and comes on like Linton Kwesi Johnston – righteous and intense – and with the texture of a gravely preacher. Nothing like what you might hear played by dancehall fetishists here in Australia, and almost the polar opposite of the cavernous and inviting dub space that Maurizio’s Rhythm & Sound project explores, The Bug is all fire and brimstone with an aesthetic to match. On the other side of things in the digital space of North America where there still remains a vision of a global digital utopia, Stewart Walker and Geoff White have released their combo release Discord. But there’s little discordant at all about this nice little ‘versus’ release from Force Inc. Both North American producers, Walker has worked previously with Sutekh and Swayzak and on Discord both trade almost track for track in a seamless pro-tools mix of new material. On the whole it’s a fare of minimal techno, stripped back mid-tempo beats with microsound glitches, and sometimes its difficult to understand where this sort of music fits. It’s a bit too frenetic for the loungeroom, and too detailed and subdued for the club, so I have a feeling that this becomes the perfect workaholic music for desk-bound designers and computer slaves with expensive headphones. Surprisingly, given Walker’s more prolific oputput it is the moments from Geoff White that make some tracks stand out. The slight guitar edits that play against the flow of the synth pads on Towards Another the opener from White before the jacking beats of Walker’s reply; White’s Endus with its minor concrete interjections, and the almost Herbert-styled piano motif in the final part of the cloud trio, Cumulus Bloom with its ultra-tightly edited syncopated glitch high hats. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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