White Fence's "Live in San Francisco": Music Review

This one-man, four-track, bedroom studio musician faces a challenge. Transferring the intimacy of his warped, intricately textured and lo-fi recordings, taken from five albums, to a tiny San Francisco stage poses difficulties. Tim Presley's White Fence succeeds. These folksy, jangling and rambling ditties transform through a vibrant, versatile band, if only for two nights at the end of March 2013.

At the club Amnesia, caught on a multi-track Tascam 388 by four engineers, Live In San Francisco introduced a series of concerts captured by Thee Oh See's John Dwyer, for his Castle Face label. Dwyer's own band with frequent collaborator Ty Segall has proven compatible with Presley's neo-psychedelic, early Seventies-inspired and Anglophile sounds. Presley's voice will remain an acquired taste, but those who favor Robyn Hitchcock's homage to Syd Barrett, or George Harrison and Ray Davies' earnest, hushed warbles will find Presley's updates on their British style familiar and fun.

For all his quirks on tape, Presley live exudes a detached air. Judging from these results, he might have begun the concerts with trepidation. This album opens as he scolds the audience, followed by some noodling. However, discipline kicks in. The combination of "Swagger Vets and Double Moon" with "Mr. Adams/Who Feels Right" aspires to late-Sixties pop combined with Captain Beefheart's manic arrangements. The line-up allows Presley's compositions to air out from their compressed DIY origins. In this fresh atmosphere, these melodies bloom brighter and their harmonies resound happier.

The best song comes third, not last. "Baxter Corner" may be credited to a notoriously steep street of San Franciscan grade that traps transmissions and terrifies drivers relying on GPS apps and not a topological map of the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Presley now resides. Tripling its original running time, this deft workout jolts, shudders and erupts into fiery riffs. Sean Presley and Jack Adams earn credit for their supplement to Presley's lead guitar. These three lock in to bear down.

"The Pool" blends the queasy melodies of The Soft Boys with a chord progression from The Doors. It's more awkward than the previous tracks. This mid-set shifts into a folksy singer-songwriter mode, as Presley's delivery writhes around skewed lyrics. After the freed propulsion of the see-saw rhythms of "Harness," it's back to the spindly "Lizards First." Slide guitar enlivens this originally wobbly tune. As often here, this version strengthens the Tinkertoy scaffolding of Presley's at-home song structures.

Back when Presley fronted Darker My Love, that band found some of its musicians recruited suddenly from opening for The Fall in 2006 to serving as their line-up, at least for one album. On "Chairs in the Dark," Presley's bark recalls that of Mark E. Smith. That singer must have recognized congenially eccentric talent when summoning DML to fill in on his Reformation Post TLC for 2007.

"Tame" begins as if another mid-tempo jangle, before battering down the house. Nick Murray's cymbals break through, even if Presley's moaning vocals overstay their welcome. Just as Hitchcock relied on Barrett to excess, so Presley stands accused of too closely imitating his English forebears.

But both Hitchcock and Barrett valued power within a cutting chord. One elevates "Pink Gorilla." Guitars snap and catchy notes stick in one of Presley's most accessible creations, testimony to his gift.

The careening "Enthusiasm" blurs past smoothly, despite Presley's increasing mannerisms as his affected voice carries the final songs. "Be Right Too" and the closer "Breathe Again" nod to John Lennon's "I Am the Walrus" days, and their daze conjures up a key influence on Darker My Love.

Jared Everett's bass measures these beats while the band wraps up their gigs smartly. Their leader has progressed from hardcore with The Nerve Agents through DML's soaring Beatlesque post-punk to White Fence's memorable take on cult-artist art-rock after the British Invasion. Since this album appeared, two White Fence efforts completed their discography. Today, with partner Cate Le Bon, Tim Presley dismantles the guitar-based rock of this heyday. He pursues an experimental, twinkly and bent approach to songs, having left behind these instrumental constructions of rock as we know it.
(Spectrum Culture 11/28/16)

Prolapse's "The Italian Flag": Music Review

Archeology students plus experimental drama practitioners rarely tend to form a band. In Leicester back in 1991, six young people did. Prolapse means "to fall out of." This suits the shambolic style of a group inevitably compared to The Fall. As with its unpredictable presence Mark E. Smith, so here with "Scottish" Mick Derrick. Hirsute and lumbering, he towered over co-vocalist Linda Steelyard. The two tangled on stage, he mumbling and raving in a thick, impenetrable accent. She parried his physical and verbal abuse with her defiant English lilt, and often got the better of him in their tussles.

This relationship, enacted on records throughout the '90s, fronted a post-punk and shoegazer blend of harsh and gentle textures. Prolapse's musicians fought back with their instruments against the vocal tag-team. The band's thundering rhythms and slashing guitars alternate with tipsy saunters. These efforts generated few sales compared with the critical acclaim Prolapse garnered, so revisiting The Italian Flag may entice indie-rock fans two decades on, raised on Wire, PiL and The Gang of Four. 

Three eclectic EPs appeared during 1993 and 1994, unheard by this reviewer, but some of their songs repeated on their first full-length, Pointless Walks to Dismal Places. Accurately titled, tracks such as "Hungarian Suicide Song" and "Headless in a Beat Motel" clanged out a dour mood. The latter song, however, sparked brief energy on a largely listless and downbeat collection of dirges. Signs of sonic resuscitation were sustained in "Tina, This is Matthew Stone," an enactment of kitchen sink strife. It's the kind of manic performance where one expects to have that proverbial sink thrown in.

Prolapse perked up for Backsaturday in 1995. Although laid down in two days, these tunes rattled about more melodically. Their rattle and roll resembles a truckload of instruments careening about. "TCR" highlighted the band's lead track, with a knack for a catchy beat. It eased the trepidation for listeners who may have stayed clear of the band's rowdy concerts, played out as if cage matches.

The thirteen songs on The Italian Flag benefit from enhanced production. Thanks to Julian Cope's guitarist, Donald Ross Skinner, adding keyboards as well as studio expertise, Prolapse return for album three as far more assured. Finally, an entire Prolapse album stays sharp. "Deanshanger" and "Cacaphony #A" highlight David Jeffreys and Patrick Marsden. They hammer out the loud and soft tones needed to complement the tension between Mick Derrick and Linda Steelyard. Churning chords sway about and spin. This guitar duo clamp down and pound in the messages buried in the dense mix.

Unlike Prolapse's previous albums, this one features a lyric sheet. Although its CD booklet renders the typeface nearly unreadable, the clever arrangement of two pages with Mick's words separated from Linda's repeats their call -and-response, phased arrangements. The middle of the album rises to happier moments. "Autocade," "Tunguska" and "Flat Velocity Curve" incorporate chiming keyboards (thanks to Skinner). "Visa for Violet and Van" emphasizes "Geordie" Mick Harrison on bass and Tim Pattison on drums as they interlock. Throughout, tunes remain punchy and compact, freed from the gloomy detours which slowed down many previous recordings. Finally, glimpses of beauty emerge.

"Bruxelles" finds the two singers trading off a litany of nouns. Most are everyday items. But only one gets repeated by both voices in turn: "money." This could have been a Samuel Beckett short piece.

The final entry, "Three Wooden Heads," leaves Linda Steelyard in a schoolyard sing-song mode. She trills a refrain from an old chant, while the distorted harmonies from the band conjure up a rustic and morbid past. An extended take on such an eerie lullaby morphed into Prolapse's final album in 1999. Again well-named, Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes stirs electronic layers into a guitar-bass-drums foundation. It builds upon the promise of The Italian Flag. These albums, presenting the fruition of Prolapse as a formidable and memorable creation, attest to this ensemble's angular, if ardent, stance. (Spectrum Culture 3/22/17)

Dave McGowan's "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon": Book Review

This genial set of ruminations reminds me of what were once called "bull sessions." You'd stay up late with a pal who'd regale you with off-beat speculations and ingenious theories that sounded plausible in the wee hours, at least. Dave McGowan compiled such on the Net, and one gathering resulted in this series of connections arguing, loosely, that the CIA and the military were behind the sudden influx of musical activity (I hesitate to label it all as creativity) in late 1960s Laurel Canyon.

As a native Angeleno, my memories remain those of the hazy youngster. Our 44th president, five weeks younger than me, has been relegated to "late middle age" by a journalist I recently perused, so I suppose even those of us on the cusp of fading Boomers and actually more akin to suspicious Gen X rather than the idealism of the previous generation need to be reckoned with. We after all grew up with Watergate, the return of the POWs from Vietnam, and OPEC's embargo as formative memories in junior high, a time when one's conceptions of the systems that entangle us begins to take shape.

I say this to situate myself. The hippies smacked to me of class privilege even then, while the ordinary folks I lived with and watched appeared to have to make a living and pay the bills and go to jobs they did not particularly care for often. My dad: "99% of the work done is by people who don't feel that great"; so his reply when I felt lazy and I tried to get out of weeding, cleaning kennel runs, or whatever required me to leave my bookish niche and venture out under the smoggy sun to get grimy.

Anyhow, as McGowan digresses frequently, so do I. The contents document the counterculture, but also predecessors, however dimly or briefly tied to Lookout Mountain (once the proverbial top secret place of experimentation), the "defense industry," spies, and other furtive efforts, emanating out of the Beltway with eerie regularity, once one connects the dots and fills in the family trees of a myriad.

With little talent more than to be coincidence or happenstance, many of the pampered scions found themselves rock stars, or at least hangers on and movers and shakers and hustlers and victims of such. McGowan delineates with obsessive good humor and wry asides how so many came West. His anecdotes may be familiar to those following the times, but it's entertaining to find him debunk hoary tales such as how Neil Young's hearse in Sunset Strip traffic somehow met aspiring members-to-be of Buffalo Springfield. The doleful tones of The Doors with earnest Jim Morrison (check out his lineage) get their comeuppance. And once more we contemplate the roles drugs played, to bring down such deserving outfits as Love, who could have bettered what the Doors cashed in on instead.

McGowan crams in or appends Houdini, as a coda from his other research, and like this book's trajectory, it's a wandering way into the canyon. Where houses burn with astonishing frequency, runaways get hoisted into fame, and the air of privilege for some never fades despite their hollow claims to liberal slogans. David Crosby (check out his lineage) earns deserved mockery in particular.

This lacks editing. It's all over the place, And how did the Mamas and the Papas manage to record two "fourth albums"? McGowan's affection for this intrigue proves at odds with its need for revision.

It's an enjoyable ramble, even if McGowan must admit he's stymied by the inherent secrecy within the set-ups he tries to trace. This makes for the type of "but it could all be true if we only knew the truth" sort of escape hatch that enables such suppositions their place in pop culture's fringe regions. But for any who like myself wonder why the radical protests and edgy subversion of the dangerous counterculture faded so soon into reveries and moonbeams, this provides a suggestive scenario why.
(Amazon US 5-16-17 except paragraphs 2+3)

Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades" Music Review.

Recorded exactly a year after another Manchester band's dramatic post-punk debut, "Shot By Both Sides" by Magazine, had influenced its guitar riff, "New Dawn Fades" closes side one of 1979's Unknown Pleasures. Like John McGeoch and Barry Adamson in Magazine, the guitar-bass pairing of Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook combines into a disorienting tune that marries anthem with dirge. For just as Howard Devoto dampened enthusiasm in one Mancunian line-up, so Ian Curtis does here.

His lyrics, like Devoto's single, reflect the disillusion following punk's initial burst and fade. They share the same image, too: a weapon, a victim. Curtis intones at the end of verse one: {I took the blame./ Directionless so plain to see,/A loaded gun won't set you free./So you say." Stephen Morris' drums clang away in Krautrock mechanical style. Hook's bass keeps descending as Sumner's guitar ascends. Martin Hannett's icy production layers this in backward tapes from the band's "Insight" to open "New Dawn Fades" with a disembodied whir. Over and over, the guitars sound like dim chimes.

At nearly five minutes, this feels epic. The band locks into its groove, as Curtis shifts in verse two to another perspective. {An angry voice and one who cried,/'We'll give you everything and more, The strain's too much, can't take much more.' Oh, I've walked on water, run through fire, Can't seem to feel it anymore.} However, much as listeners may hear this a a harbinger of his suicide the next year, there is a respite. For Sumner stops the ascent, and ends by a brief guitar snippet with a hint of hope.

Image. This was submitted to Spectrum Culture 8-13-15 for staff pick #8/top ten Joy Division songs.

P.S. We each first had to send our own top 15 picks to be culled, in reverse order. These are mine. 

15. I Remember Nothing
14. Wilderness
13. Shadowplay
12. Atrocity Exhibition
11. Insight
10. Candidate
9. Interzone
8. Disorder
7. New Dawn Fades
6. Colony
5. Novelty
4. Transmission
3. Isolation
2. She's Lost Control
1. These Days

No "Love Will Tear Us Apart." Great song but it's been ruined for me by too many radio plays.

Michael Moynihan + Didrik Soderlind's "Lords of Chaos": Book Review

This book has sparked much attention, considering its volatile subject. Reading it at a distance of 15-20 years from the events, the subtitle "the bloody rise of the Satanic metal underground" betrays the gist and the gore of the account. That is, it examines the media role in "satanic panic" while it responds to it. Michael Moynihan, joined by Didrik Soderlind, extracts the roots of the black metal scene, especially in Norway. The first three chapters range widely, with surprising scholarship sprinkled into the narrative, with engaging metaphors and clever asides. Entertaining and educational, this start bodes well to expose this scene for everyday readers, who likely lack knowledge firsthand.

The authors then delve into the "bloody" events. They preface their manner of investigating this milieu in an "unflinching fashion" with a reminder some may overlook. Twice on pp. x/xi they remind us. "It is not our job to pass judgment on our subjects; we expect our readers to have the intelligence to do that for themselves." And, noting our our world needs "dangerous ideas more than ever," even if it "may not need the often ill-formed and destructive ideas expressed by some of the protagonists" in this study, nevertheless "we felt all along that this is an issue for the individual reader to decide." Intriguingly, my public library system shelves this in the Young Adult musical section.

While the central characters are well-known within the small black metal community, the authors enrich their presentation with scholars and observers less expected. For instance, Jacob Jervill, a Christian minister, laments the decline of attention paid to evil within the State Church of Norway, and he analyzes the vacuum left by the diminished force of that tradition in a system where affluence, conformity, and comfort spark not contentment but unrest among some growing up feeling outsiders.

Likewise, in Ch. 10, critiques by the members of Ulver, by Simen Midgaard, and by Pal Mathiesen deepen one's understanding of the forces tempting youth towards acts of destruction and sounds of despair. Varg Vikernes, as a lightning rod for such energies, typically avers: "I never say anything to 'provoke,' but I 'provoke' intentionally to say something." (qtd. 162) His pronouncements fill many pages of this work, and the authors editorialize vis-a-vis his "ex post facto revisionism" his habit to frame previous remarks in light of his present concerns. These do evolve or shift, as the Nordic concentration among this set turns from a youthful dalliance or dance with the "adversary" to a more folkish and saga lore-inspired Odinist or Ásatrú focused revival of the suppressed old beliefs. (213)

Michael Rothstein speaks of the willingness of certain believers to then turn to Thule and UFOs as extended forays into Northern occultism. These searchers then find authorities, however discredited, to support their worldview. (188) So, Lords of Chaos (the title taken rather anti-climatically from a clique of Ft. Myers, Florida, teens led by one of their number who called himself God) serves too as a reminder of how alternative and fringe movements gravitate towards earlier conspiracies and cabals.

For this, Hendrik Mobus' interview offers the most in-depth example. Calling himself a scapegoat like a "modern Loki," (292) he and Varg (p. 162) justify a shared ambition to recast black metal in a "militant heathen" (303) mode of attack. In retrospect, the authors place the satanic adjective of their subtitle in a time period late in the 20c, waning more than waxing by the time of the 2003 2nd ed.

But as Vikernes rationalizes, the dramatic claim of why medieval stave churches were burned across his homeland echoes, even as the mindset of the perpetrators may move with the times, new and old. "Show Odin to the people and Odin will be lit in their souls." (96) Many may scoff at this confident proclamation, but a few do seek out heathen ways as more invigorating than Christianity's claims.

P.S. This book while footnoted could have been improved by an index. The chapters skip about and transitions diminish as the pages add up. It aims for an international coverage but this weakens the later sections. As it progresses, it's as if journalism has been inserted or recycled. Women barely appear; this may not be the fault of the authors, but it symbolizes a lacuna worth questioning. The clip art and illustrations may lighten density but it lessens the impact as not all are necessary. It could have listed a discography, to supplement URLs for indie labels and told more about the music itself from leading bands as well as their deeds, crimes, and punishments. A needed if now-dated resource.
(Amazon US 1/4/17)

Randal Doane's "Stealing All Transmissions": Book Review

 
How did the late '70s arrival of The Clash to a nation they loved and who loved them, in Randal Doane's phrase, jostle the privileged perch granted FM free-form radio and long-form rock journalism in American popular culture? Doane attempts to answer this complex topic in a few pages. He matches an affection for what was pitched as "the only band that matters" with a professor's determination to apply theory and scholarship about popular culture to the band's American impact.

FM radio crackled with battles between disco and new wave, Steely Dan or the Eagles. Guitar heroes Van Halen threatened Boston and Kansas. Pre-packaged rock radio in syndication, and then MTV, took advantage of alternative rock trends. The Clash and other punks rallied to break down barriers on air. Doane's examines, circa 1978-81, a brief success by the underdogs against the suits. Even if The Clash was signed to CBS. That band marketed its message as widely as possible. The result (as this reviewer can attest) is that many younger listeners picked up guitars and books, inspired by not only the "molten" noise of early import singles, but the Clash's lyrical range and cultural references.

A dean at Oberlin College, Doane combines academic critique (and its concomitant tendency to lapse into seminar-speak) with livelier glimpses from his formative years as a fan growing up in Stockton, California. He enriches these youthful reminiscences with an imaginative journey. He invents a quest narrative, following the figures narrated over four sides of London Calling as that album's storyline follows dreamers and schemers from the band's hometown across the sea to success or failure in Manhattan. (I note as an aside that the first box-set retrospective issued by the band is called Clash on Broadway, a location which fits both London and New York City, even as it emphasizes the latter.)

Doane straddles the boundaries between fan and critic throughout this study. He analyzes the music industry as a Clash historian, and as an often discrete investigation into the state of American rock radio in the 1970s. He documents the struggle on FM stations between AOR, disco, hard rock, and the new wave upstarts. These were often marketed by Sire Records and eager labels, some indie, some subsidiaries of the majors, who allied with the bands which claimed to challenge the system. Of course, they also aspired to chart success and lucrative tours. This bifurcated presentation, by not only the bands in their clash of ambitions but Doane's staggered structure of his chapters between those on The Clash and those on radio, weakens this as a cohesive thesis. However, considering particular chapters apart from this diffused presentation, Doane's attempt to analyze The Clash within an American moment as the 70s leapt into the 80s provides a useful perspective of the band's impact. It draws upon books by Clayton Heylin and Jon Savage, integrating their research with his own predilection for New York City area rock stations. This case study looks into how they did or did not play the Clash, and rivals or colleagues from both local and British punk and new wave scenes.

This book is enhanced by backline roadie Barry "The Baker" Auguste's introduction. He conveys the changing fortunes of a band gradually if seemingly suddenly, for one behind the scenes, lifted from clubs to theaters to arenas by its third album, London Calling. This book does not delve very far into the mid-1980s phase of the line-up. Instead, Doane sticks to the first three albums, and he shows what worked and what did not on the various domestic and import versions of their incendiary self-titled debut, and the more, uh, diverse, follow-up, Give 'Em Enough Rope, produced by Blue Oyster Cult associate Sandy Pearlman. As for the sprawling triple disc, the what to me felt the never-ending experiments of Sandinista!, brisk coverage is given. Doane marvels at it, as diehard fans tend to do.

Tellingly, he offers no real attention to their more mainstream album, the last one with their steadiest line-up, Combat Rock, and none to the album made by Joe Strummer, Paul Simenon, and new recruits to replace Mick Jones and Topper Headon, the widely disdained Cut the Crap. It would have been intriguing to follow the fortunes of the band: their tours, their radio play, and their LP sales. Certainly one wonders how The Clash, once they topped the charts, dealt with their long-term prospects. It's a relevant example of the music industry's own determination to encourage or ignore a band. Yes, the band's saga during their global roller coaster of the 1980s has been covered before. But Doane stops the story early on, preferring to end while the band anticipated greater fame in the U.S. and beyond.

Given this wistful denouement, Doane's study offers a muted celebration and a cautionary tale of how rock radio and promotion U.S. markets tried to fend off, ignore, or embrace us, then-scattered and once few, fans of punk and new wave. Even if the academic tone slows his pace, Doane places The Clash within their attempt to break into the American market. Best of all, his diligence and scrutiny  reminds readers about when such inventive music, combative attitudes, and intelligent lyrics (well, some of the time) mattered for millions of fans growing up then. Today, the hit-and-miss history of the one punk band which made it big as arena rockers endures. And, professors grow up to be fans, or in my case, reviewers. For, the Clash were the first "real" band I ever saw, in March, 1980, at the Santa Monica Civic. They arrived hours late, but nobody (except for punctual me) seemed to mind. (Spectrum Culture 9-7-14)

Dave Laing's "One Chord Wonders": Book Review

How punk was deployed as a reaction against what Dave Laing calls the "gigantism" of AOR, pop and progressive rock is familiar. Laing, an English researcher, chooses a more academic approach. He scrutinizes how late-1970s British punk applies to cultural critique. He incorporates insights from Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva. This reprint of Laing's 1985 semiological analysis precedes Jon Savage's first-hand account, England's Dreaming (1991). Introduced briefly by The Adverts' guitarist-singer, T.V. Smith, One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock  takes its title from that band's song, a tribute to D.I.Y. spunk.

Unlike Savage or Smith, Laing distances himself as a scholar. He finds predecessors for punk's nexus within pop culture. In its collision of the authentic with the commercial, punk's predicament echoes that of British folksong proponents in 1899 and London pub-rockers in the earlier 1970s. Movements seeking a return or revival of "basic" music confront those who capitalize on its inherent potential for profit. Craving exposure, musicians often must capitulate to the system. Rejecting one tradition, innovators resurrect another, back-to-basics. Johnny Ramone, cited here, embodies this choice. "We're playing pure rock'n'roll with no blues or folk or any of that stuff in it." 

Instead, punk promoted "artiface, exaggeration, and outrage." One chord wonders turned an insult into a celebration. Distorted sounds and mangled meanings created a "frontal assault" on triple-disc or concept albums of the mid-1970s. However, Laing reports how this music reworked old lyrical themes. Us vs. The Man repeated. Narcissism remained along with protest. Lacking a danceable element, punk stressed exclusivity and negativity. Failing to break out in 1977-1978, punk, Laing asserts, faded rapidly. He notes how broadcasters resisted its disruption and preferred easier listening.

In chapters titled "Formation," "Naming," "Looking," "Listening" and "Framing," Laing dissects the  strategies claimed by punk. Drier at times, if supplemented by data, the middle section of his book muddles along. Ivory tower jargon slows its pace. It revives in its later stages, where a short "picture section" shows how punks adopted their public roles to what Laing defines as the movement's "provisional discursive formation." That is, punk offered positions to adopt, roles to play and rules to adhere to. Laing presents publicity shots, professional photographs taken in concert, and vamping  poses as proof. The last category portrayed one trap punk fell into. Originally seeking to provoke or to subvert, earnestly posing punks "allow themselves to be consumed as pin-ups of sex objects." 

The final chapter, "After," adds an intriguing analogy. Laing notes that prior to punk, new bands felt making an album was equivalent to making a full-length film. Such an artistic effort seemed to overwhelm. Therefore, professional producers and studios had to be recruited and funded. By contrast, Laing reasons, punk was akin to creating a magazine or a paperback. Cassettes around 1980 began to change the way music by amateurs was distributed. Laing contrasts the cost of a hardcover book to that of a photocopy, as fans began to join with musicians to reproduce their efforts cheaply. 

Enriching this study, Laing refutes the claim that most punks came from a working-class background. He compares their class and education to that of beat groups between 1963-1967. He finds little difference in these categories. Such statistics deepen the value of this compact book. It may serve well in seminars or by scholars accordingly, as a critical contribution to Popular Music Studies. 

Finally, Laing places punk within intellectual contexts. Benjamin and Adorno looked at Dada and at the "shock-effects" of radical art, as predecessors to punk, in Laing's estimation. Similarly, he ends with Barthes and Kristeva. They located within the avant-garde "the site of the return of the repressed." Some punks embraced mid-1970s semiotic possibilities of confusion. Fragmenting, discontents chose other fashions, sartorial and musical, to emulate by the decade's end. Diehards chose "anchored meanings" of mohawks, Oi and slogans embroidered across leather jackets. 

What united punk, for one or two years in the later 1970s, was the tension between realistic lyrics decrying conformity and repression and the sonic jolt that undermines musical predictability. Full of paradox, punk in Laing's judgment produced a problem. It set out as a rock alternative, but it had to stay recognizable as rock, to bring in an audience, to sustain a career and to meet industry demands. (Spectrum Culture + Amazon US 5/4/15)

Flying Saucer Attack's "Instrumentals 2015": Music Review

Although it’s nearly an hour, the 15 songs on Flying Saucer Attack’s new album, Instrumentals 2015, rush by. Dave Pearce has recorded under the name Flying Saucer Attack for over 20 years. His previous records, the earliest of which he made with vocalist Rachel Brook, explored what he titled "rural psychedelia." Their album covers often showed haunted scenes, twilit or dark with little or no typography. This visual approach suits music that consists of spare arrangements with simple vocals and recurring arrangements of processed guitars. 

Pearce has always clung to a DIY aesthetic, combining an organic sensibility with layers of textures. He buries soft voices under feedback waves. Recording to cassette and CD-R, he captures a gritty, crumpled texture with a post-rock approach explores how far he can alter his guitar. 

His records in the ‘90s ranged from pastoral moods to manic loops of sound. During and after his partnership with Brook, Pearce insisted upon control over his production. He resisted the compact disc, giving in only to reach a wider audience than that for vinyl, in that transitional era before vinyl came back.

Mirror was the last in this series of experiments on CD. Released days after the new millennium, it signaled a shift. The cover’s garish borders swirled in psychedelic lettering and hinted at bolder, more unsettled contents, drum and bass jostled alongside folksy and ambient tunes. 

One might have hoped Flying Saucer Attack would continue along those lines, but Instrumentals is their first new release in 15 years, with a title that clearly explains the new approach. Pearce's soft voice is missed, his focus instead on effects-laden guitar washes and wisps. The tracks are titled only by number, forcing the listener to concentrate on the musical merit of pieces that range from elusive snippets and clouds of chords overlapping with studio wizardry to a 10-minute finale that lets Pierce’s signature space-rock to find its footing before floating off.

Most of the album’s early tracks come and go smoothly if less memorably, but the album picks up in the double-digits. “Instrumental 10” alternates a soaring sound and a metronomic repetition that suggests crickets. Simple but effective, this hearkens back to FSA's roots in Krautrock and drone.  “Instrumental 11” is more rhythmic and less meandering, while “Instrumental 14” stays catchy all the way through. But the problem remains that the brevity of many of these tracks doesn’t give the listener a chance to linger and get lost in the music.

The band is at their best on long songs where Pearce can build and sustain momentum, but this album’s many short tracks frustrate this pattern. Still, it's good to hear him again, even without vocals, and this may lead new audiences back to his best work in the ‘90s. (Spectrum Culture 9-