Fucking Champs


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III , 7/10
IV , 6.5/10
V , 6/10
Concentrick: Lucid Dreaming , 4/10
Fucking AM: Gold (2004), 4/10
Weakling: Dead As Dreams (2000), 6.5/10
VI (2007), 5/10
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The Fucking Champs are an instrumental trio from San Francisco that relies on the double-guitar attack of Josh Smith and Tim Green (a former Nation Of Ulysses). Drummer (and occasionally keyboardist) Tim Soete completes the line-up. They began in 1994 with two self-released cassettes, Music for Films About Rock and Triumph of the Air Elementals, followed in 1995 by the singles Some Swords (Wantage), one of their few vocal tracks, and Second 7 (Galaxia). The defining moment was III (Frenetic, 1997), a 25-track double album released under the moniker C4AM95. The style of the guitar duo had solidified in a forceful fusion of heavy-metal and math-rock, that did not eschew melodic progressions but only if grafted on convoluted structures. Sometimes reminiscent of Voivod , the Champs romp through rock and roll numbers such as Amanda and Valkyrie Is Dying and linger on the complex scaffolding of Dale Bozzio, Flawless Victory and The Golden Pipes Trilogy. The album is embellished with several short electronic ditties in the vein of Brian Eno (Now Is The Winter Of Our Discoteque, Andres Segovia Interests Me).

IV (Drag City, 2000) is a more adult and restrained excursion into the sources of their inspiration. Some of the rawer and harsher tones are gone, and while most tracks (What's A Little Reign) still indulge in solemn meditations on harmony, a few of them sound as breezy and sprightly as anything Joe Satriani has done (Esprit De Corpse). The electronic experiments of the previous album have turned into flirtations with dance-music (Policenauts). The album is marred by homages to their heavy-metal idols (Thor Is Like Immortal) and stoner innuendos (Extra Man). This is where instrumental progressive-metal weds post-rock, and the resulting hybrid couldn't be more fatal.

Tim Green also has an electronica project called Concentrick that released the soothing, relaxing ambient music of Music For Tunnels (Louder, 2000), Tender Machines (Deluxe, 2002) and Lucid Dreaming (Emperor Jones, 2002) for guitar, keyboards, cello and flute, and then Aluminum Lake (Drag City, 2007), the first album to feature a band.

Concentrick is the solo project of Fucking Champs' guitarist Tim Green. Lucid Dreaming (Emperor Jones, 2002) is, surprisingly, an album of soothing electronic ambient music engulfed in slowly morphing, celestial new-age melodies (but the tour de force of Sometimes The Sun Rises, occupying half of the album, is instead a dumb display of harsh drones).


Fucking Champs: V (Drag City, 2002)
The playing on V (Drag City, 2002) is often formidable and fearless (Never Enough Neck), and occasionally amusing (Children Perceive The Hoax Cluster I Am The Album Cover). There is little, though, that they had not done before (maybe the atmospheric Aliens of Gold), which means that, ultimately, this is falsely intellectual heavy-metal music for the age of easy-to-make CDs.

The Fucking AM is a mostly instrumental joint collaboration between the Fucking Champs and Trans AM. But Gold (Drag City, 2004) is merely a rather outdated take on hard-rock with echoes of prog-metal suites (Bad Leg, Powerpoint) and southern-rock jams (Doing Research For An Autobiography). One inspired nolvety (the minimalist progression of Electrico Gomez) is not enough to redeem a trivial idea.

The Fucking Champs' guitarist Josh Smith is also in Weakling, a black metal outfit that released the five colossal tracks of Dead As Dreams (Tumult, 2000), reminiscent of Scandinavian black metal. Members of Weakling went on to play in Amber Asylum, Drunk Horse, Asunder, Sangre Amado, Saros and Gault. Weakling's frontman John Gossard formed Dispirit that debuted with the cassette Rehearsal At Oboreten.

VI (Drag City, 2007), replacing Josh Smith with Trans Am's Phil Manley, boasts A Forgotten Chapter In The History Of Ideas and little else.

The Fucking Champs' guitarist Tim Green and Piano Magic's occasional drummer Ezra Feinberg formed Citay and released albums of soaring guitar-pop such as Citay (Dead Oceans, 2006) and Little Kingdom (Dead Oceans, 2007).

Josh Smith also formed Futur Skullz (Kemado, 2011).

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