Darin Gray - St. Louis Shuffle
(Family Vineyard)
Darin Gray made his name as bassist in Skin Graft stalwarts Dazzling Killmen and You Fantastic!, and now plays with Grand Ulena, a band known for playing more notes faster than the guy in Micro Machines commercials was able to talk. On St. Louis Shuffle, Gray leaves the entire idea of notes behind, as well as any semblance of the rock roots, however twisted, that his most infamous former projects sprouted from. St. Louis Shuffle finds Gray, still with bass in hands, probing the far subtler environments of silence and microscopic minimalism. Gray plays solo bass, but much like the guitar of Kevin Drumm, it's easy to forget (and perhaps quite irrelevant) what instrument Gray is using. St. Louis Shuffle clicks, pops, and squeals through thirty-five minutes of what is equal parts a solo bass exploration of the electronic Clicks 'n' Cuts genre proliferated by Mille Plateaux, and a sparser invocation of the industrial sound creations of the late David Lynch collaborator Alan Splet. Gray's eerie palette of sounds makes little to no use of the usual picking or plucking of strings, instead, he uses the bass as a percussion instrument, or as a tool for the creation of ambient reverberation. The input jack and various knobs and switches on his bass become much more dynamic parts of the music than any nickel-wound steel wires, in fact, it could be questionable whether Gray's bass was strung during much of the recording of the album. Silence abounds, punctuated by stabs of static and electric hum. The noises are finely diced by the output of the pickups cutting in and out, and Gray interrupts the music with the comparatively gargantuan dynamics of a high-pitched squeal or dense, low-end rumble. Nearly inaudible noises and tense silences comprise a large part of the album's nineteen tracks, making The St. Louis Shuffle an almost scary experience. Much as with a horror film in which the viewer knows that a bloody murder will occur, just not when, Gray's compositions leave the listener in a dark void, questioning their senses, straining for even the smallest audible clue in hopes it will give them even a moment of warning before the next sounds, forged of unpredictable intensity, volume, and duration, shatter the silence.
Uncompromisingly unlistenable, St. Louis Shuffle is much more a pure experiment in all senses of the word than a document of experimental music. It's an experiment in the composer's creation and technique, but also in listener comfort, cause and effect, and the element of aural surprise. Darin Gray's music here surely isn't pretty, and it's not an album that will coalesce well with Archie Shepp and the new Mudhoney album on your CD player's random play function, but, as sound manipulation goes, St. Louis Shuffle's a booming success.
|
