If Thousands - Lullabye
(Silber)
Clang Quartet - The Separation of Church & Hate
(Silber)
From Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby through New Age mystics Aeoliah and Michel Genest on up to the current crop of snorecore enthusiasts like Windy & Carl and Stars of the Lid, artists have been recreating the sonic equivalent of sleeping brainwaves for many years. (For those of you looking for a more familiar reference point, imagine the beginning of Pink Floyd's "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" going on for an hour without Gilmour's classic four-note guitar break interrupting the flow.) Silber's own Aarktica had a stunning entry into the genre with No Solace in Sleep a few years back, and they return to the sleep-inducing centerstage with this release. In fact, If Thousands (the Duluth-based duo of Aaron Molina and Christian McShane) even include the following suggestion in their liners: "Please listen to this recording at as low a volume as possible to induce & aid in slumber.") Another nice touch is the medical warning sticker, "May cause drowsiness; alcohol may increase this effect" on the jewel case! The resulting subtle background hum (one lengthy track with index points) carries the listener on a magic carpet ride through dreamland, with the occasional, distant, barely audible short story narration ("The Daylight and The Sun") and the mantric repetitive lyric of "We miss Matt terribly."
Another Floydian reference is the sonar bleeps (from "Echoes") that quietly drift into the end of "He Had the Smell of Wyoming Sagebrush." And for a visual reference point to this amazing sonic exploration of inner space, imagine if in that old 60s classic sci-fi film "Fantastic Voyage," the scientists had been inserted into your temporal lobe and traversed the synapses in your brain exploring your unconsciousness in an experiment to discover the source of your dreams. That's one trip I'd like to take and If Thousands provide the spaceship. Like floating in amniotic fluid, kids from 96 days to 96 years will be soothed into a somnambulistic state of slumber—the perfect sleep aid, whether you're putting grandma or the new born down for the night.
At the other end of the sonic spectrum, we have the noisy Clang-ing and clattering of Scotty Irving (aka Clang Quartet), whose sophomore effort continues in the same percussive vein as his 2000 debut, Jihad, also on Silber.
I have to admit I'm not a fan of noise artists, let alone percussive noise artists, but the leadoff track, "Amazing Disgrace," with its excessive, guitar-driven beat is worth repeated listens. However, the same cannot be said for "The Infidel Within," a spoken-word slice of life based on the 20-year-old legal pissing contest between Amway and Proctor & Gamble over the latter's alleged involvement with the Church of Satan and supposed donation of the company's profits to said church. The piece is interesting for about five minutes from a comical standpoint and DJs will get a lot of "dropin" mileage out of some of the excerpts, but it soon becomes redundant as it reiterates the same accusations over and over again and ultimately takes too long (about 9 minutes) to get its (admirable) message across, namely that too many people, be they Christian or otherwise, allow others to make their decisions for them rather than researching the facts and making up their own minds.
There is also some self-promotion via "Two or More Gathered in HIS Name Part 2" which includes some local TV adverts for Scotty's upcoming gigs, and "Hadephobia" uses clever wordplay to present a dissertation on Heaven and Hell over a catchy riff that melds an old Carl Stalling cartoon cue with an inverted take on the melody line from Trans-X's "Living On Video." Another goldmine for DJs looking for some catchy dropins, although his open-ended question on the influence of Satan in professional sports (Duke Blue Devils, New Jersey Devils) fails to mention the most obvious choice, Buffalo Sabres' forward Miroslav Satan (albeit pronounced "Zhuh-tan")!
Scotty's intelligent rap on the title track sounds like a televangelist emoting to his flock, except he makes more sense and, while he comes across like a proselytizer, he's (presumably) tongue-in-cheekily parodying these self-righteous tube boobs, whose false prophesies and gross misrepresentations of the bible are self-serving at best.
The only downside is that all of Scotty's toys (saws, fans, musical crutches(!!), staplers, hockey masks with bells and finger cymbals attached, a cast from a broken leg, a TV with the mute button on "played" through a guitar pickup, and drums) tend to overwhelm the listener to the point of distraction. Now that he's percussed us on a few releases, maybe Scotty's next offering will feature his stand-up routine. He certainly has plenty of intelligent arguments to profer and an entertaining way of delivering them—maybe we need to hear him without his tape loops and home movies and objects d'art that go clang in the night. For now, though, The Separation of Church & Hate is a George Carlin album played over the soundtrack to a demolition derby.
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