Alright suckers, time for another instalment of everyone’s
favourite, most irregular music column. This is the one where I set the Digital
Audio Player to “Shuffle,” we see what comes out and I offer you a few words
and ideas.
No. 1: This Heat – ‘Test Card II’
‘Test Card II’ nicely bookends
the first This Heat album. The opener, ‘Test Card I,’ is basically forty-seven
seconds of silence that fuck with the uninitiated listener. They crank the
volume, lean into the speaker before ‘Horizontal Hold’ blasts them back. This one,
the closer, drifts off into the ether: a final call; a signal fading forever.
I used to get really bugged by the ambient tape-work This
Heat would put together for their albums. I’ve been guilty of skipping past
them to get to ‘A New Kind of Water’ or ‘Twilight Furniture.’ I wanted to get
to hard stuff; where I thought the real power was. The “Deceit” tracks at least had some weight
behind them: ‘Radio Prague’ is pretty much the sound of trying to pick up
Eastern Europe through a Cold War blizzard; ‘Hi Baku Shyo’ is a prayer for
victims of modern Asian wars. ‘Water’, from this album, is industrial Gamelan,
from the depths of Cold Storage.
But thinking about it now, the albums wouldn’t be able to
work without them. If it wasn’t for these breaks, the extra bit of space to let
the listener drift and contemplate, she might not be as open to the songs that
follow. Considering a lot of the louder songs are as frightening and
claustrophobic as anything you’re likely to hear, it’s nice to know they were
thinking of the listener. It is the mark of proper craftsmen. That these guys
can piece together a record - a document of all their experiments - and shape
it into a cohesive whole is a testament to their incredible minds.
No. 2: Fax – ‘Bosque’
I put together a review of this album about three years
back, around the time it came out. It
was one of those rare titles that made it out of the review pile and into
regular rotation. It had the right vibe, the right slowness, for late-night
novel reading. Fax is from Mexico; Bosque is the name given to the evergreen
gallery forests along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, from the Spanish word for
woodland. I don’t know if this track feels organic enough to remind me of a
forest: too many processors, compression, electro-blab. But it’s very slow
moving, entirely beatless. And whereas the other tracks kick that kind of
deep bass, this one meanders and piles on more and more instruments and effects
all slipping in slipping out with nothing to hold onto, floating just outside
your line of sight.
No. 3: Mozart – ‘Aprite un po’ quegl’occhi’ (from Marriage of Figaro)
So Figaro’s pretty cut up about finding out his girl, Susanna,
gave a pin as a present to the Count. He figures they’re fucking behind his
back. He goes and tells his Mum that he’s gonna go on some, like, crusade
against these guys and against unfaithful chicks in general. And now he’s hanging out in the garden with
Basilio who’s just told him some shit about how foolish he was to believe in
this chick Susanna and that he, Basilio, was once young and a bit of a fuckwit
to boot. So Figaro’s thinking, fuck, what is it with these chicks? They tell
you one thing then change their minds and have it off with someone else. Open
your fucken eyes, guys. These chicks who you reckon are all that, who charm you
and woo you and tell you the sweetest secrets and make you feel incredible when
you’ve got them between the sheets and . . . and . . . Il resto nol dico, gia
ognun lo sa!
No. 4: Beastie Boys – So What’cha Want
Play it fucken loud.
No. 5: David Bowie – ‘Red Money’
Another excellent bookend to finish us off. This one not
just an album closer but the final word from one of the Bowie’s most intriguing
and fruitful periods. Bowie marked the beginning of his ‘Berlin’ days by
working on Iggy Pop’s first solo album, The
Idiot. The first track off that was ‘Sister Midnight,’ a loose kraut-funk
nightmare. Bowie ended this period with the Lodger
album. The last cut from that album is this, ‘Red Money,’ which is a reworking
of the aforementioned Iggy track, the drums and bass and one line of the lyric
keep in. ‘Sister Midnight’ was originally put together by Bowie and Carlos
Alomar and performed on the ‘Station to Station’ tour before they offered it to
Iggy. And Dave and Iggy got to perform it
together on the TV in 1977.
‘Red Money’ itself is has Dave counting the cost of duty and
obligation. As the man himself said around the time of the album’s release, “Red
boxes keep cropping up in my paintings, and they represent responsibility.” The
lyrics, taken as they are, keep along the abstract word association path Bowie
trod all through the late 70’s. But the guy, from here, seems set for
mediocrity. No more thinking you’re an alien. No more diet of milk, cocaine and
capsicum. And no more picking up German transsexuals in cabaret bars. It’s time
to take a break, watch your kids grow up, marry a supermodel and watch you
influence grow.
