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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Despite being a classic power-trio of guitar, bass and drums,
North Carolina's Ahleuchatistas
(guitarist Shane Perlowin, bassist Derek Poteat and drummer Sean Dail)
coined an original version of
King Crimson's progressive-rock for
the post-industrial age.
The all-instrumental twin albums
On the Culture Industry (Angura Sound, 2004) and The Same and the Other (NFI, 2004)
packed an intense amount of ideas that derailed the dominant cliches of
post-rock, jazzcore and nu-metal music. Just like with King Crimson, there
was a lot more jazz than rock disguised underneath the rock presentation.
The convoluted scores exuded virtuoso confidence with the instruments but
also the energetic, rebellious zeitgeist of the times.
Tracks:
Intro,
The Machines Became Cognizant,
Lacerate,
A Thought Like A Hammer,
Al Jazeera,
I Don't Remember Falling Asleep Here,
Right Sock Brown, Red Leg Blue,
Fodder For Defamation,
(Ibid. 4),
Tentacle,
Empathievery,
Lament For Bhopal,
Tracks:
Cracked Teeth,
Ecstacy Combat Boots,
Imperceptibility,
Good Question,
Falling Bards,
Lee Kyang Hae,
RPG 1,
RPG 2,
RPG 3,
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Shots Rang Out At The Press Conference,
Joyous Disruptions,
The trio engages in brief and frantic bursts of energy on
What You Will (Cuneiform, 2006). They do interact, and somewhat
logically, but the premise (the guitar) is dissonant, which forces the
rhythm section to abandon its timekeeping role and adopt a more flexible
and creative stance. Many of the pieces are mere demonstrations of aethetic
intents (for example, the machine-gun attack of Shell in Ogoniland),
but the three-minute tracks have enough time to elaborate on the concept.
And the result sits
halfway between the Raybeats and
Fushitsusha:
grotesquely dismembered melodies (Remember Rumsfeld at Abu Ghraib,
Unfolding, Ho Chi Minh Is Gonna Win!),
manic crescendos (Sherman's March,
I Used To Be Just Like You),
convoluted dynamics at breackneck speed
(Sometimes There's A Buggy,
Before The Law,
What Are You Gonna Do?),
and one massive eruption of King Crimson-ian melodrama, Last Spark From God.
They all test the limits of "music" without actually venturing into
abstract noisemaking.
None of them is indispensable or memorable. But all of them prepare the
listener for the artistic centerpiece, the closing nine-minute
You Know My Family. Here all the strands of the trio's experiment
come together and blend in a suddenly cohesive, streamlined and (gasp)
thoughtful whole. Not one note is where one would expect to find it, but
the piece flows smoothly, despite the ebbing of flowing of dissonance and
discordance, despite the contrasts and the conflicts.
Even In The Midst (Cuneiform, 2007) recycles a portfolio of techniques
ad ideas that they have come to master. However, the songs tend to sound like
containers, assemblies, reservoirs, libraries, rather than actual musical
artifacts. The various sections of Prosthetic God are not quite
logically connected.
The shorter songs are only deceptively "short": they pack an impressive amount
of action. But, again, often all that action amounts to frenzy for the sake
of frenzy. Technically speaking, though, pieces such as
Brilliant Danderkovs are stunning tours de force.
The best result is probably to be found in Take Me to Your Leader Never Sounded So Alien, which also happens to be the "quiet" piece. Ditto for the closing Where We Left Off, that is the least eventful of all the tracks, six minutes of pointillistic psychedelic doodling.
Ahleuchatistas also released:
Of The Body Prone (Tzadik, 2009), bookended by two nine-minute pieces,
2/3 Consensus On The Un-finite Possibilities and
Map's Tattered Edges;
Location Location (Open Letter, 2011), with the nine-minute
La Faena;
Heads Full Of Poison (Cuneiform, 2012), with the 16-minute
Heads Full Of Poison;
and Arrebato (2015).
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