7 Year Rabbit Cycle - Wind Machines
(Free Porcupine Society)
With everything going on in the world right now—a babbling idiot for a president, an unjust war without end in the middle east, the Terminator in public office—it's easy to lose sight of the dire environmental crisis our planet is going to experience in the not-too-distant future. Fortunately, last year 7 Year Rabbit Cycle masterminds and sometimes Alaskan citizens Rob Fisk & Kelly Goodefisk (both Deerhoof alums) released Animal People, a mammoth noise-rock record full of thinly veiled political protest, the words describing a natural and primal world ruled by animals. This year they are back again with Wind Machines, a new CD with accompanying book featuring an expanded and slightly more ambiguous lineup and even more contempt and rage for the state our world is in. Rarely using anything beyond a standard rock band lineup, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle unleashes a wall of sound featuring a lot of distortion, lo-fi recording techniques, and people screaming their heads off.
While "noise-rock" is a rapidly growing genre, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle have still managed to make music that stands out from their peers. Perhaps most striking is that the band often sounds completely unrehearsed, as though they just walked in a room, plugged in their distortion pedals, and hit record. This may or may not be true, but oddly enough their seeming (and perhaps intentional) ineptitude does not detract from their music as you might expect but rather amplifies their message. After all, isn't what they're fighting against the cold, unfeeling, and calculated moves of G.W. and Co.? 7 Year Rabbit Cycle is none of these things. At no point is 7 Year Rabbit Cycle's intent anything other than crystal clear. The vocals by Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart on "Skin of Ash" are particularly effective with his distorted screams and quiet whispers over a barren musical landscape of slowly chiming guitars in otherwise empty space.
Oddly enough, with all its rage and passion in the words and music of Wind Machines, the album is perhaps summed no better than in its final track. The music in what at first might sound like a silly and juvenile Black Flag cover reveals itself to be a vicious critique on the kind of single-minded greed that leads to the destruction of nature so passionately opposed throughout Wind Machines. 7 Year Rabbit Cycle have made an album firmly committed to their musical and social interests, and while it's at times a bit tedious, it's an album full of powerful music and words of dissent.
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