Lowercase is a guitar-drums duo (Imaad Wasif and Brian Girgus)
from San Francisco (via Palm Desert)
that plays a weird hybrid of lo-fi pop, post-rock and slo-core, a veritable
summa of 1990s alternative rock dialects.
They debuted with three singles that established a credible record of
heavy albeit minimal noise-rock:
Sometimes I Feel Like A Vampire (Punk In My Vitamins, 1995),
Brass Tacks (X-Mas Records, 1995),
and Cadence (Amphetamine Reptile USA, 1995).
The album All Destructive Urges (Amphetamine Reptiles, 1996) expanded
their sound towards more dramatic forms of expression.
Occasionally, the duo enters a catchy melody, but
As Your Mouth is pop that ends in terrified screaming,
and Earth Minus One is pop depressed by suicidal agony.
Their normal mood is one of extreme passion and emotion, like
in the discordant, unstable Palace Vaccine, like the
incendiary atmosphere of Ringbleeder, like the
frantic bacchanal of Sometimes I Feel Like A Vampire.
The Faded Line swings from tormented quiet to clinical paroxysm,
as if Bedhead jammed with
Jesus Lizard.
The nine-minute psychodrama Because I Can owes to
Slint's convoluted harmonies as well as to
Built To Spill's free-form counterpoint:
the music ebbs and flows, punctuated by a depressed slow-motion raga-like
guitar line and disrupted by sudden bursts of grief.
As in the best tradition of progressive hardcore,
the (horrible) vocals, the (distorted) riffs and the (pounding) beats
are artsy as well as demented.
The resulting sound is a contrast of extremes.
A bass player guests on
Kill The Lights (Amphetamine Reptiles, 1997), but only
She Takes Me and Stairways, the two most aggressive songs,
benefit (atmospherically speaking) from the addition.
She Takes Me is like a Rolling Stones song
(say, Street Fighting Men) that focuses only on the terrifying groove
and reduces the melody to a Nirvana-esque lament/howl.
Stairways is a two-minute instrumental that builds up a
dissonant maelstrom, a sort of "the
Sonic Youth meet the
King Crimson".
The rest is a descent into a personal hell.
The eight-minute Slightly Dazed is virtually a documentary of a man
losing his mind, the guitar repeating an ominous pattern over a funereal beat
until it becomes a death toll (the overall feeling being similar to Pink Floyd's
early psychodramas).
Neurasthenia is even less musical, and, by making the most of the least,
paints a harrowing picture of claustrophobia and desperation.
The lengthy instrumental overture of the nine-minute Rare Anger
returns to the Pink Floyd-ian suspense, with an additional dose of guitar
noise and dejected melodies, and this time the screaming reaches an apocalyptic
intensity.
On the other hand, the heaviness of the 12-minute nightmare
You're A King owes a lot to the Melvins.
For several minutes a slow, hypnotic dirge digs deep into the soul.
Then the vocalist intones a dilated melody that sounds like a Navajo psalm
over martial drums.
The single Imbedded on Ice (Punk In My Vitamins, 1998) heralds a
more austere phase, that dawns with the hypnotic, droning tracks of
The Going Away Present (Punk In My Vitamins, 1999).
Lowercase (the founding duo with yet another bassist) borrows stylistic
elements from early Sonic Youth and early
Swans to concoct dark, menacing, desperate
pieces
(The Going Away Present, Floodlit, Glisten to the Pink).
The new self-indulgent tour de force is the 12-minute
This Train Will Not Stop.
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da Claudio Vespignani)
Lowercase e’ un
duo
chitarra-batteria di San Francisco (via Palm Desert) che suona uno
strano ibrido
di pop lo-fi, post-rock e slo-core, un’autentico riassunto dei
linguaggi del
rock alternativo degli anni 90. Debuttarono con tre singoli che
costituirono un
credibile documento di pesante noise-rock, seppur minimale: Sometimes I feel like a vampire
(Punk
in my
Vitamins 1995), Brass tacks (X-Mas Records 1995) e Cadence
(Amphetamine Reptile 1995). L’album All destructive
urges
(Amphetamine Reptile 1996) estende il loro programma di ricerca al
contrappunto free-form dei Built to Spill, alle armonie contorte
degli
Slint e alle melodie al rallentatore dei Bedhead
(Because I
can, Earth minus one). Le parti vocali (orribili), i riff (distorti)
e le
ritmiche (pestate) sono demenziali anche se possiedono velleita’
artistiche. Il
suono finale che ne deriva e’ un contrasto di eccessi.
Su Kill the lights (Amphetamine Reptile 1997)
compare un bassista, anche se solo su She
takes me
e Stairways, i due brani piu’ aggressivi. Il resto
e’ una discesa in
un inferno personale. La pesantezza dell’incubo di 12 minuti di
You’re a
king deve molto ai Melvins. L’umore del disco e’
meglio rappresentato
dalla claustrofobica e disperata Neurasthenia.
Il singolo Imbedded on ice (Punk in my
Vitamins 1998)
annuncia una fase piu’ austera, che ha inizio con gli ipnotici,
ronzanti brani
di The going away present (Punk in my Vitamins 1999). I Lowercase
(il duo
fondatore con un nuovo bassista) prendono in prestito elementi
stilistici dai
primi Sonic Youth e dai primi Swans pre creare pezzi
oscuri,
disperati, minacciosi (The going away present, Floodlit, Glisten to
the
pink). Il nuovo tour de force autoindulgente e’ This train
will not
stop, della durata di 12
minuti.
|
